Gary Ballance is past the point of worrying about his England prospects but remains ready if he gets the nod for the first Test against South Africa.
Ballance looked destined for a lengthy spell in the international wilderness when he was dropped after making 24 runs over four innings in a torturous tour of Bangladesh last winter.
But he has bounced back in style this season, buoyed by his elevation to the Yorkshire captaincy, scoring 815 championship runs with three centuries – second only to the great Kumar Sangakkara in the domestic standings.
There are places up for the grabs in England's batting line-up and head coach Trevor Bayliss admitted on Thursday Ballance had done more than enough to warrant renewed consideration ahead of Saturday's squad announcement.
The 27-year-old, who is captaining England Lions against the Proteas at New Road this week, is not stressing about the situation though.
"Not at all, I've had the times being nervous and worrying about it," he said after day one in Worcester fell foul of rain and bad light with the tourists 58 for one after 20 overs.
"I've been in those situations before and you can't control it. My job is to score runs. If I do get the phone call then great, if not then I'm able to handle it and deal with it better than times in the past.
"Honestly, after that tough series (in Bangladesh), on tough wickets when you're left out you think 'I'm never playing again' but there was still five Tests in India so I had to keep myself up, try to work in case there was a recall."
Ballance has made a point of not altering his batting technique too dramatically after it was picked apart in detail by a host of pundits, playing the ball a fraction later being his only real concession.
Instead he believes his purple patch this campaign is down to simply mastering the basics of his own game.
"I think that's the best way to put it," he said.
"I haven't changed too much, from the naked eye you probably couldn't see much I'm just doing what I do better.
"It's taken a lot of work but you have to keep on top of it. People told me to change a little bit, maybe last year, but I tried to do that and couldn't score anything so I've kind of gone back to what I'm good at.
"Coming into the season, obviously I want to play for England but I didn't think about it, I just tried to score as many runs as I could for Yorkshire. The focus was on being captain, which I hadn't done before, being captain I couldn't worry about anything else like 'I've got to score runs today so I can get noticed'. That didn't even cross my mind.
"Being focused like that I feel like it helped my batting."
