Because the English selectors believe that Strauss' issues are temperamental and not technical. Which is about as ludicrous as thinking that Bopara had it in him to be a test class bat.
This is an interesting one, though. I've no doubt the problems are technical, but I actually don't think they're insoluble.
I saw, for the first time in ages, some footage of his strokes to the boundary in his debut century against New Zealand.
Strauss' biggest problem of late has been hitting the ball in the air off the front-foot, especially on the off-side - never demonstrated worse than in the Tests at Lord's last summer - he was caught at backward-point against WI and dropped against India. Now there were several strokes in the innings against New Zealand where he played exactly the sort of delivery he was getting into trouble with in 2007, and played them perfectly, driving high-elbow style through extra-cover with a full face on the ground rather than snatching at them with a flowing follow-through and hitting them in the air through backward-point.
Can he start playing that way again? I don't know. But I damn well hope he - or someone else - has spotted what I spotted earlier and that he's been having bowling-machine session after bowling-machine session and trying to sort it.
EDIT: just looked at his dismissals since the start of 2006, which is IMO when the problems started. He's had 41, 1 of which was a run-out. In the 40 dismissals to bowlers,
31 have been to catches (plus 6 lbw and 3 bowled). Now, all right, a good few of those were to wicketkeepers and slips, and a good few of them were to good deliveries that moved away, and in the Pakistan series most of them were after he'd already scored a lot. But it's still indicative of the problems. In that time he's averaged 35.68, but that'll go down substantially if you remove the Pakistan series.
What worries me, though, is that he was unable against West Indies in 2007 to cash-in even on bowling even worse than that he'd cashed-in on against Pakistan in 2006. Suggesting that there was a degeneration even between 2006 and 2007.
One thing's fore sure, I really damn well wish he'd never been given the captaincy, as then no-one could even be under the illusion that that had anything to do with it.