IF THERE is to be a silver lining on the dark cloud the one-day series in England has been it would have to be Ashton Agar.

The 24-year-old triple threat ——he can bowl, bat and is a gun in the field — had played four one-day games across two years before being picked as the frontline spinner in an already young bowling attack.

He has a Cricket Australia contract and the support of new coach Justin Langer as a potential three-form player given his return to the Test team in Bangladesh last year.

Langer believes Agar’s improvement with the bat is a key ingredient in finding the right ICC World Cup team recipe, and before the fifth and final game overnight, only three teammates had scored more than his 130 runs in this series.

Despite Langer’s clear backing, however, he has to keep his place as a bowler.

Agar has the support of Test star Nathan Lyon, who has spent ample time with him during a tour in which the younger spinner kept the man with 309 Test wickets out of the side until the fourth game.

“I’m a big fan of Ashton Agar,” Lyon said.

“When we bowl in the nets together, we’re always talking, we’re enjoying bowling.”

Vice-captain Aaron Finch has seen a few spinners come and go during his 92 ODIs and in Agar sees a quick learner who has shown enough, in the face of a continued England onslaught, to suggest he’s made of the right stuff to help lift the World Cup champions out of their white-ball rut.

“He’s shown it for the last couple of years in domestic cricket and he just keeps getting better and better. He took a bit of a hammering in one of the games, but he learns very quick,” Finch said.

“The skills he’s got with the bat at seven … he just keeps improving all the time.

“I think how quick he learns and how quick he’s improving all the time from year to year in state cricket but even game to game bowling to the best players in the world is a credit to him.

“The way he analyses the game, thinks about the game is outstanding. He’s a huge positive for us.”