England recalls Ramprakash as cover for injured Thorpe

LONDON - England today recalled batsman Mark Ramprakash as an injury cover for left-hander Graham Thorpe in a 14-man squad named for the first Ashes cricket Test against Australia starting at Edgbaston on Thursday.

Thorpe, England's most successful batsman during the winter in Pakistan and Sri Lanka and in the two Tests against Pakistan, is very doubtful for the game because of a lingering calf muscle injury.

England will be strengthened by the availability of skipper Nasser Hussain, who has recovered from a broken thumb, allrounder Craig White, left-arm spinner Ashley Giles and maybe Thorpe, who missed the Tri-Nations one-day series.

While Hussain missed the second Test defeat against Pakistan at Old Trafford and then the one-dayers, White and Giles both missed the two-Test series and the one-dayers due to long-suffering injuries. Giles, England's series-winning bowler in Pakistan last year, has been hampered by a sore Achilles tendon.

Also causing a headache for the selectors is Michael Vaughan's knee cyst which ruled him out of the last one-dayer against Australia at The Oval.

"We currently have injury concerns about three players, Michael Vaughan, Ashley Giles and Graham Thorpe," said chairman of selectors David Graveney.

"Graham is the most serious concern at present and we will need to check the fitness of all three players at Edgbaston.

"While the selectors did consider the worst case scenario in relation to injuries, we have decided to call up only one extra player as cover at this stage. We will review the situation, however, once the players are at Edgbaston and their injuries have been assessed by (physiotherapist) Dean Conway.

"Mark Ramprakash is an experienced test player with a good record against Australia and he has been in excellent form for his county this season. We feel he represents the best option as a cover player given the doubts about Graham's fitness."

Ramprakash, 31, played the last of his 42 Tests against the West Indies at Lord's last year before losing his place with scores of 18, 0, 0 and 2 in the first two Tests when he opened the batting.

But in eight Tests against Australia, the right-hander, who moved this season from Middlesex to Surrey, has scored 615 runs at an average of 43.93 inclusive of six half centuries.

In all he has scored 1,796 runs at an average of 26.41 with a solitary century against the West Indies at Barbados in 1998 when he score 154 runs.

England has failed to beat Australia in the last seven Ashes series since winning it under Mike Gatting's captaincy in the 1986-87 series in Australia. Despite winning four series in a row, it was held 1-1 by Pakistan and confidence going into the Ashes tests is low after a poor performance in the one-dayers when the team lost all six games against Australia and Pakistan.

England squad: Nasser Hussain (captain), Michael Atherton, Marcus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan, Graham Thorpe, Alec Stewart, Ian Ward, Craig White, Mark Ramprakash, Dominic Cork, Ashley Giles, Andy Caddick, Darren Gough and Matthew Hoggard.