SPORT has thrown up some unlikely heroes this week, almost by virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

Paul Collingwood, a batsman badly out of form, found his picture splashed all over the newspapers in the act of scoring the winning runs in the Old Trafford Test, but was marginally upstaged by Dean Windass.

I'm not sure whether Windass' white crop is a result of his age or bleaching, but he had his moment of glory through volleying Hull City into the Premiership, and now he can return to his original job of packing frozen peas.

One reputable newspaper headlined him "The £60 million man", creating the impression that was the sum he would earn the club from their first foray into the top flight. However, the report made no reference to that, merely observing: "whether he can destroy Premier League defences come August is the £60m question."

Overlooking the fact that the question is normally priced in dollars, it isn't even worth asking.

Windass wasn't good enough for the top flight when Middlesbrough signed him several years ago, so at 39 he and that other Boro old boy, 34- year-old Nicky Barmby, are not going to prevent Hull from doing a Derby.

There's a fairytale element to this story, which gives it legs and continues to add some credence to three up, three down.

But once the stardust wears off harsh reality will set in, just as it would for Doncaster if they continued their upward mobility.

It doesn't seem long since their ex-chairman was suspected of burning down the stand as the club teetered on the brink of extinction and slipped into the Conference. So their rise from the ashes is an equally good yarn, especially as they reached the second tier for the first time for 50 years by beating Leeds.

PERHAPS the celebratory pictures in Tuesdays' papers should have been of Old Trafford's heavy roller rather than Collingwood as it appears to be taking most of the credit for England's win.

The batting side each day can have the pitch rolled for seven minutes and conventional wisdom has it that anything too heavy breaks up the surface.

Michael Vaughan thought otherwise and the pitch on which 16 wickets fell on the third day was deadened to the point of neutering Daniel Vettori's bag of snakes.

He and his team should have learned a huge lesson from this defeat. Known as scrappers when they are the underdogs, they batted with gay abandon in their second innings when they were so far ahead they thought the match was won.

That's not to take anything away from Monty Panesar, who has got to 100 Test wickets faster than Muttiah Muralitharan and cemented a place which might have come under threat from Yorkshire's Adil Rashid.

If Rashid continues to improve his batting perhaps in the not-too-distant future he will help to give the England team balance by filling the allrounder's slot. And wouldn't it be good to see two spinners in the side?

Whatever the cause of Vettori's decline, Old Trafford invariably produces interesting cricket and Lancashire are quite right to bemoan the fact that money is dictating where future Tests will be held, leaving their ground without one for three years.

MARTYN Moxon will surely not sign any more Pakistanis as overseas players for Yorkshire.

Considering he wasn't sad to see the back of Shoaib Akhtar during his time with Durham, it's a surprise that Moxon has continued to gamble with players whose reputations offer no guarantee of success.

Younis Khan was only a partial success last season, when half of his 824 championship runs came from two double centuries, the second one in a dead match against Kent at Scarborough just prior to his departure. He was replaced by Inzamam-ul-Haq, who averaged 22.25 in three championship games.

This season the signing of Rana Naved-ul-Hasan has so far proved a disaster, the only consolation being that across the Pennines sorting out Mohammad Yousuf's visa has been more trouble than he has proved worth.

He contributed two runs to Lancashire's feeble effort in the Friends Provident Trophy at Headingley this week, and having played in the last-ball win against Durham when his visa was out of date Durham ought to have had grounds for complaint.

WHEN the 2004 Ryder Cup team were asked what their specific requirements were Miguel Angel Jimenez asked for Rioja and cigars. With this year's Ryder Cup captain Nick Faldo reported to be monitoring the fitness of his likely players, 44-year-old Jimenez struck a blow for the hedonists when he emerged from four gruelling days at Wentworth to win at the second extra hole on Sunday.

He is now top of the Ryder Cup points list and as Faldo won't want two flabby 40- somethings in his team it's not looking good for Colin Montgomerie's chances of earning a wild card.