Strauss needs to emulate Cook with the bat to silence critics

That parlour game of pass the captaincy begins again this week as Alastair Cook, after a job well done in shading the NatWest Series against Sri Lanka 3-2, hands back to Andrew Strauss for the real challenge of the summer — a Test series against India, the world's No 1 side.

Before that mouth-watering encounter, which begins at Lord's on July 21, Strauss must try to bolster his command with some batting form, something he will attempt to do in Somerset colours this Friday in a three-day game against India at Taunton.

It is a bizarre tryst that leaves England's Test captain having to guest for a team for which he has no affiliation, but so arcane is the county fixture list this is what it has come to.

Still, he is a double Ashes-winning captain, something even Scrumpy drinkers might appreciate. That game is also India's sole opportunity of match practice before the first Test so it will be interesting to see if they play Zaheer Khan, their fine left-arm opening bowler, who was rested from the current tour of the West Indies.

Left-arm swing has been Strauss's nemesis over the past 12 months, something reprised in the recent series against Sri Lanka by Chanaka Welegedara — a lankier, less savvy version of Zaheer — who dismissed him cheaply three times in a row. But do India keep Zaheer away from Strauss at Taunton or do they pick him to try to prolong the doubts that have begun to nag away?

After his break, Zaheer needs the bowling but Strauss also needs to sort out his geometry against him. In what could become the duel that decides the series, playing against Zaheer this week gives him an opportunity to do that.

Duncan Fletcher, India's new coach, will undoubtedly have some input. Fletcher knows Strauss and several England batsmen intimately as well as how to score psychological points against them. Taunton could be abuzz with intrigue. There was finally something tantalising too in the NatWest Series, when the decider, which England won in the penultimate over, became the first close match of the rubber.

In a tense finish, Cook, the new captain, and his team, held their nerve long enough to blink last, as Angelo Mathews and Jeevan Mendis threatened to win it for the visitors. After England's two previous defeats and victories had followed a distinct pattern — winning when pitches were grassy and skies grey, and losing when they were bare and blue — this game was against type.