The game has barely begun and the injury time outs are causing a few shake ups. Steve Harmison hung up his boots at the last Champions Trophy in 2006 and he would not contemplated the day he would find himself back in the reckoning. Graeme Smith’s heroics were extolled but the South Africa skipper is running out of time. When Kevin Pietersen, England’s new captain, accepted ‘the man of the series’ award at the end of a successful first Test as skipper, he mentioned the fact that he would have liked his ‘man of the match’ award to be given to the recalled Steve Harmison. That Harmison is someone Pietersen hails highly despite the fact that the tall, sometimes troubled fast bowler has had his erratic moments became all too apparent. Ryan Sidebottom’s injury which necessitated Harmison’s call up in the Tests has now had a more profound effect on an England side that could use all the help they can get. Pietersen is likely to have played a hand in convincing Harmison to change his mind and make himself available for England. Pietersen is shrewd enough to realize that England’s success in the Ashes of 2005 came largely with a four pronged pace attack and he is making sure that the team building process under his wing gets off to a bang. That Pietersen is already looking at what has worked to make it happen for England again shows that even as a new member of the squad, he has learnt the essential in order to get his team to win more matches. There is little doubt that England will have a new opening pair at the crease, with Andrew Strauss finding himself out of the reckoning and Alastair Cook being subjected to discrimination, rightly or otherwise. It will be interesting to note Pietersen’s choice of personnel, already made apparent of his views on Owais Shah. Perhaps another Brit of Asian origin, Ravindra Bopara, will get a look in at some stage as well. For the moment, Pietersen will hope that his makeshift opening pair of plausibly someone like Ian Bell (since he does bat at number three) and another name recall for Matt Prior does the trick against South Africa. On the other hand, Graeme Smith has led stoically from the front, braving what now appears to be a nagging tennis elbow. He has not had an opportunity to take a break and unlikely now that he will do so in this series with Albie Morkel virtually ruled out with a shoulder injury. But South Africa have tougher assignments down the line with a series against Australia at the end of the year. Smith will not want to chance a scenario for surgery that will put him out a la Sachin Tendulkar for a considerable amount of time. South Africa may see a new interim skipper on their next assignment. For this England tour, the South African grit continues. Can they capitalize on England’s considerably vulnerable rebuilding process? They should prevail.