THESE are worrying times for anyone who, like me, is a member of the Chris Schofield fan club, writes ANDY WILSON.

It is seven years now since David Lloyd, in his days as Lancashire's coach, first started talking about a talented young leg-spinner playing junior cricket for Littleborough.

Three years later that talented leg-spinner made his Lancashire debut, and within two more he was given an England contract and played two Tests against Zimbabwe, with the inevitable talk that he could be the English Shane Warne.

Yet now Schofield appears as far as ever from establishing himself as a regular in Lancashire's Championship team, even after a winter at the new cricket academy run by Rod Marsh in Adelaide.

In fact it is worse than that, as the 23-year-old is known to have received a poor report from Marsh, and is now even struggling to reproduce the good one-day form he has shown in the last couple of years.

Warren Hegg only trusted him with three overs in the Benson and Hedges Cup semi final against Warwickshire, on an Old Trafford pitch which should have suited him, and that was hardly surprising as despite taking a wicket, Schofield conceded 23 runs at a crucial stage in the match.

Hegg, manager Mike Watkinson, in fact everyone at Old Trafford are desperate to see Schofield succeed, but at the moment he is a luxury they can scarcely afford, and that is one reason why Gary Yates, Mr Dependable, has been recalled to the squad for tomorrow's National League game at Essex.

Surprisingly for a player who has often been described as too mouthy for his own good, Schofield seems to suffer from fragile confidence.

A four or five wicket performance, in any type of cricket, and he might start to look again like the exciting match-winning bowler he was promising to be. But Lancashire need to find a way of giving him that confidence.

They have tried a spell in the seconds, and a long bowl in this week's game against Durham University, but I wonder if it might be time for more radical therapy which would also solve another of Lancashire's headaches - the need to find an opening partner for Mark Chilton in one-day cricket while David

Byas is injured.

Why not throw Schofield in at the top of the order, where he has scored so many runs in league cricket, rather than wasting Neil Fairbrother as they did in the B&H semi? It must be worth a try.