Dad Alan is a coach at Butcher's county Surrey

The point of the exercise was to transform the left-hander from being a hero-for-a-day into a regular run-scorer at Test level.

And after proving that he had it in him to take on three of the world's best quick bowlers that meant just one thing: spin.

By experimenting with mats - some of them turned upside down to make them even more abrasive and some placed outside off stump to simulate rough - Mark worked away at his technique against spin bowling.

The results could be seen in Ahmedabad where his scores of 51 and 92 were all the more impressive for the way that he handled Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.

"He is still happier against the seamers but he worked very hard last winter on his technique against spin bowling in the indoor nets," said his father Alan, the former England batsman who is now assistant coach at Surrey.

"In fact he practised almost exclusively against the spinners. And before he went away we got a former Pakistan under-19 leg-spinner who was much like Anil Kumble, bowling the googly more than the leg-break, in to bowl at him."

"It's easy to get uptight... You don't play your natural game"

Alan Butcher

The famous Headingley knock against Australia

"He has opened for most of his career and certainly he feels much better against the spinners when he has been able to get his feet moving to the seamers first," said Alan.

"In fact after the Mohali Test (where Butcher scored 4 and 18 and was twice dismissed by Tinu Yohannan) I thought that he was looking to play too many shots against the seamers.

"It was almost as if he felt that he had to get his runs in early before the spinners came on.

"I told him that there was no point changing the way he plays merely because a known threat was going to come along later, because that threat would be along whether he liked it or not. And he accepted it.

Shock to the system

"But one of the biggest factors in his turnaround is that he was not expecting to play against Australia.

"What often happens when you are desperate to take the chance that you have worked so hard to make is that you get uptight and don't play your natural game.

"It came as such a shock to him when he was recalled that he felt he was not on trial.

"I called him up the day after the Headingley Test to ask him if it had been real and that I hadn't dreamed it. I have to admit that after the first hour or so when the ball was zipping about it did not look like the team was going to make 180, let alone one player."

Perhaps now the surprise will be when Butcher fails.