England selectors face tough calls

England's selectors will meet in the next couple of days with the future of Alastair Cook's ODI captaincy certain to occupy a significant portion of their discussion.

While Peter Moores, the England coach, was at pains to offer his support following the end of the limited-overs matches against India, it was noticeable that he was unable to guarantee the on-going backing of the rest of the England selectors.

That was, perhaps, simply a courtesy. Moores might well have been reluctant to provide assurances on the views of others before he has spoken to them.

Or it may be that, despite all the protestations of unity, cracks are beginning to show in the level of support shown to Cook by the selectors. With his own form modest - it is now 39 innings since he has reached 80 in an ODI - and the team's fortunes also flagging - England have lost their last five ODI series under Cook's captaincy - it is understandable that the selectors at least want to discuss Cook's position before committing themselves to naming another squad.

England have one more ODI series - seven matches in Sri Lanka - before they depart for Australia where they will play a tri-series event with Australia and India before their World Cup campaign begins. If they are going to make a change before the World Cup, it has to be now.

While the squad for the Sri Lanka tour will not be picked until after the Royal London Cup final at Lord's on September 20, the selectors are expected to recommend a list of players for central contracts in the next 48 hours with a view to those - and the choice of captain - being ratified by the ECB board later this week.

And if Stuart Broad is one name who is certain, fitness permitting, to miss the Sri Lanka trip and be included for the World Cup, the selectors are keen to for the squads to be as similar to one another as possible. Cook, it seems, has an anxious wait ahead of him.

"I am one of four selectors," Moores said. "I will take my views strongly into that meeting and I will talk to the other selectors. But I would be wrong to start saying 'the England captain is this and this is our side' because I am one of four selectors.

"The three selectors and myself will pick [the squad], but any captain that plays for England, always goes to the board [for ratification] I think, that's the legitimate way of doing it. Any captain will go to the board."

Moores, though, made his own thoughts clear. "If I get a frustration, it's when people question Alastair's quality as a player," he said. "He's a bloke who's scored five ODI hundreds and who is a very fine cricketer and a very fine batter.

"Now he's like a lot of us in this ODI series, he's had a period of time where he hasn't played as well as he would want to and he's got to try to get and better. That means we are going to have assess all positions and how we set that side up. We've got a very clear goal of what we want to do is to win a World Cup.

"We've got a focus on one-day cricket and we haven't had that - a period of time, six or seven months, when you haven't got Test match cricket - in the time that I've been involved in cricket.

"In one-day cricket, he would say he would have loved to gone on and got more hundreds. But he's still scored more hundreds than any other England player since the last World Cup - he's scored four to everybody else's two. He's still in the top 10 run-scorers in the world since the World Cup.

"So he's a very fine one-day player, but nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about 'he's out of form', or whatever he's not doing right. I think it's harsh criticising him as a player.

"We are going to sit and look at every position, which is right because we've got to pick an England team to win a World Cup. It would be wrong to not look very robustly at every situation in that team, to make sure we do it right.

"I listen to all people's views and I sit in a room with three other selectors and we make the decision that we think is right. For people to think we are not strategising or not looking at things with a critical eye, we are."

Moores remains committed to the strategy England have pursued in ODIs in recent times. While the selectors have been under pressure to pick more aggressive batsmen at the top of the order - the likes of Jason Roy - Moores believes that, against two new balls and in the 50-over game, it remains necessary to include batsmen with an ability to build a foundation and defend when appropriate.

"We know we need quality players," Moores said. "We need to be able to look at that and build-up a 50-over side and different sorts of players. Not everybody is going to strike, you want some who can go and get big scores. As we saw on Sunday, when you can get some of your strikers in at the back end of the innings, it makes a big difference. All sides use that tactic, especially with only four fielders out in the later stages."