HE has been rewarded with an England Lions call-up for an outstanding season with Hampshire, but Michael Lumb may be one of the last South African-born cricketers to wear the Three Lions.

England selector Geoff Miller was referring to the decision to include Somerset’s Craig Kieswetter in the same squad for next month’s one-day and Twenty20 series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates when he acknowledged: “We’ve come to a point where we will have to be careful with [the number of South Africans in the team] and we will.

“I won’t say he will be the last, but we will monitor it.”

Four England players involved in the final Test against South Africa this week – Andrew Strauss, Matt Prior, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen – are all playing against the country of their birth.

Strauss and Prior learnt most of their cricket in England but like Trott, Pietersen and the recently-qualified Kieswetter, Lumb was schooled in South Africa (St Stithian's, Joahnnesburg).

Unlike Kieswetter, he has been qualified for several years but, like Trott and the 22 year-old Somerset wicketkeeper-batsman, he also played for South Africa Under-19s.

Bowled by Graeme Swann for 11 when he faced an England side including Rob Key in an U19 Test at Cape Town in 1998, Lumb used his medium pace (he was a budding all rounder in those days) to ta k e 4-43 and 2-21 against an England team led by Owais Shah in the first two of his eight U19 ODIs for South Africa.

Two years later, he began the England qualification process by returning to his family’s roots.

Lumb’s dad Richard scored 11,723 first class runs for Yorkshire at 31.2 from 1970-84, once played for Young England and was not far from a full England call up himself in the late 1970s, when his opening partnership with Geoff Boycott was regarded as one of the best in the County Championship.

So, believing he had a better chance of playing professionally away from South African cricket’s politicking, Lumb used his Yorkshire contacts to move to Headingley, making his first-class debut in 2000.

The irony is that until 1992 Yorkshire only ever fielded a team whose players were all born within the county.

And not until Michael Vaughan made his debut a year later did they include players educated outside their boundaries.

But there is no doubting Lumb’s Yorkshire cricket pedigree. His dad was born in Doncaster, his uncle played for Yorkshire’s second XI and his grandad Joe was so heavily involved in junior cricket that The Joe Lumb Cup is still the most prestigious U18 competition in Yorkshire.

Lumb also has impressive cricketing genes on his mother’s side as his mum Sue’s brother, Tony Smith, scored more than 3,500 first-class runs for Natal from 1972-84.

Born in Johannesburg in February 1980, a few months after his dad’s best season for Yorkshire, Lumb was taken under the wing of Darren Lehmann in 2000.

Lehmann rated Lumb highly but his talent has never been in question.

After scoring 1,038 first-class runs at 41 for Yorkshire in 2003 (until last summer the only time he had passed 1,000 first-class runs in a season) he toured India with an England A side including Pietersen and Prior.

But he struggled on the sub continent and did not return to his best until 2006, when his 963 first-class runs at 41.8 included a fine 105 at the Rose Bowl against an in-form Chris Tremlett and Shane Warne.

That helped convince Warne to bring Lumb to the Rose Bowl. With Lehmann’s Yorkshire career now over, Lumb took the chance to reignite his career under another charismatic Aussie.

Fittingly, Yorkshire were the opponents when Lumb scored his maiden Hampshire fifty in his second appearance for the county, but he reached fifty 13 times before converting one into his first hundred.

Batting has always come so easy to Lumb that his dismissals have often been due more to lapses in concentration than technical flaws.

But he is now a much more mature player and has thrived on the extra responsibility that comes with batting at number three.

That is where he has scored his two Championship hundreds for Hampshire, 107 against Somerset in August 2008 and a career-best 219 against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge a year later.

Last season was his coming of age in a Hampshire shirt, in all competitions.

His 1,006 first-class runs at 43.73 may have been inflated by 172 against Loughborough UCCE, but he became Hampshire’s first Twenty20 centurion – 124 not out against Essex – on his way to 442 runs at 44.2 in the shortest format.

Only Trott scored more Twenty20 Cup runs, but none of the leading scorers came close to Lumb’s 160.7 strike rate.

Lumb’s opening partnership with Jimmy Adams was also the foundation of Hampshire’s FP Trophy success, to which he contributed 431 runs at 47.8 and a strike rate of 85.3.

Married last weekend, he will aim to spend his 30th birthday displaying his World Twenty20 credentials on January 12, when the Lions play the of three Twenty20 matches against Pakistan A, in Sharjah, followed by one against England in Abu Dhabi.

Who knows, a successful fortnight for Lumb in the UAE could be followed by an England appearance against South Africa in the World Twenty20 Super Eights in May.