ENGLAND were miserably poor at Headingley and Ladbrokes have them at 7/2 against winning the final Test, but it would be wrong to write off their chances completely of regaining the Ashes at the Brit Oval, starting on Aug 20.

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As readers of this website will be aware long before the Leeds fiasco, the selectors dug themselves into a pit by going back to Ian Bell and they were very fortunate to escape media wrath. Now changes are needed for the fifth Test at the worst possible time, because any newcomer to the side will struggle for an impact at such a late stage.

In fact, having wasted a golden opportunity to blood Jonathan Trott at Headingley, England can really only go with the players who won at Lord's as much as possible, including a half-crocked Andrew Flintoff. As a group of them know their careers are on the line, they might maintain their concentration for longer. Even this might not be enough, but it is the best chance. Lord's for the memories or Lourdes for a 'miracle' cure?

Flintoff will return to replace Bell, and the leg-spin all-rounder Adil Rashid will probably have to be drafted in to replace Steve Harmison, the fast bowler who failed so disappointingly at Headingley. Perhaps a new untried speciallist batsman will be needed, but if the Oval strip proves to be a featherbed, a decent series will end in anti-climax anyway.

Several million cricket followers will realise from the excellent Channel Five highlights programme that Bell and Paul Collingwood are not good enough at four and five. And Ravi Bopara should not be batting as high as No 3. On-screen analysis by Geoff Boycott and presenter Mark Nicholas added further damning evidence.

Bell, usually looking to press forward on the front foot, can be easy prey for lifters, and he pushes across the line when facing left-arm fast bowlers such as Mitchell Johnson and, last year, Zaheer Khan. Everyone knows this about Bell -- even Geoff Miller, the national selector, and coach Andy Flower.

Collingwood has not even been a heavy scorer at county level with Durham. He somehow found his way into the England side as a fighter and top fielder in one-day cricket, creeping up the order to five in this Ashes series when Kevin Pietersen dropped out through injury. Matt Prior is a far better bat than 'Colly' anyway.

Little can be gained by recalling Mark Ramprakash on his home strip a few weeks before his 40th birthday. His heavy scoring for Surrey has been gratifying, but he did not deliver many dominant Test innings when he was in his prime.

The reason why the selectors refused to make obvious changes for Headingley was probably caution, the sort of funk that is bred into cricketers during their life on the circuit. These people like certainty, even if this means mediocrity. Change means disruption, risk and extra management. Change can mean admitting a mistake -- all so reminiscent of Duncan Fletcher's final year in charge.

No one would advocate going back to the days of wholesale pack-shuffling that used to destroy a team's morale, and it is true that the selectors could not be blamed for James Anderson's awful bowling. He lacked zest and accuracy at Headingley, perhaps because he had ricked something while batting. Harmison should have been managed on the field, forced to pitch less short. Ryan Sidebottom should have been picked, but that is easy to say in hindsight.

The problem was the batting. When Andrew Flintoff was ruled out, the selectors' thought process seemed to freeze. They thought that bowling would need the attention. They seemed to forget England's upper order remained paper thin, waiting to be taken. They ducked out of giving Trott a debut at No 3 and promoting Prior up the order.

Bopara, inked in at No 3, could only do his best. As he implied in The Mail On Sunday , it was hardly his fault he failed twice. "While many have questioned whether I have the specific skills you need to go in at No3, where you start every innings one ball away from opening," he said, "the fact is that that is where England want me to bat, and it is up to me to find a way to do it.

"I do believe that, working with our coach Andy Flower, there are certain technical issues I need to address. I did so during the series against West Indies, when it was pointed out to me that I was starting to let my back foot skip away towards fine leg and I managed to correct it straight away.

"Just as important for me now is my thinking and my approach. When you are searching for a bit of form, the main danger for a player like me, who likes to go for his shots, is that I might start slipping into survival mode. I’ve been guilty of doing that in the past, both in county cricket and when I had that terrible time on my first England tour in Sri Lanka, and it just doesn’t work.

"I’m always aware of the need to play according to the state of the innings and the match, but the worst thing a player like me can do is to shut down some shots in order to reduce the risk of getting out.

If you concentrate only on staying in, you are more or less bound to get out because you just allow the opposing bowlers to crank up the pressure."

At least Flintoff seems a certainty to start at the Oval, because his agent claimed the all-rounder declared himself fit last week. Andrew Chandler, said Flintoff was devastated not to be playing at Headingley. "I've never seen anybody as low as Flintoff was on Thursday night when he was told he would not be selected," he said in The Times.

The fourth Test lasted barely two and half days. The region's economy had been expected to benefit by some £10 million, according to the Yorkshire Post newspaper, with almost all the hotels in Leeds virtually full.

The Yorkshire Tourist Board said before the game that the atmosphere in the city was "buzzing", and restaurants and tourist attractions were enjoying an upturn. Tourist Board staff were apparently inundated with inquiries -- "mainly Australians keen to find out more about the city," a spokesman said.

Mark Lowther, manager of The Boundary Hotel in Cardigan Road, Headingley, said: "We're completely booked up and have been since Christmas. For the entire five days we are completely full. It is fantastic."

One would imagine that Leeds became pretty dead on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday amid a welter of cancelled bookings.