It's crunch time for England's top five
With tours to Sri Lanka and India coming up, Andy Flower has plenty to work to do with England's batsmen
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
With tours to Sri Lanka and India coming up, Andy Flower has plenty to work to do with England's batsmen. With the exception of the relatively inexperienced Eoin Morgan, dropping even one of the senior players will be a big call because if one of them's left out now, the chances of a comeback are slim, writes Michael Vaughan in the Telegraph.
For the next eight months before India, Flower will be working on improving how the players pick off ones and twos. A lot of net sessions will be geared so the lads can play in the subcontinent. They have boundary options, but you have to be able to go down the wicket on these slow low wickets. You cannot punch the ball off the back foot as the old way of working the ball off a length for ones and twos is dangerous because of the pace modern spinners bowl at – Abdur Rehman was bowling at 56mph.
Dropped from the one-day squad after averaging just 8.50 in the three Tests in the UAE, Ian Bell is itching to rectify his game and make a strong comeback. In his column for the Independent, Bell wants to get to Sri Lanka ten days before their first warm-up game and work on his game against spin.
Physically, I don't feel as though I need a break. Some of the younger English players have been playing domestic cricket there and, if it's possible, I'd jump at the chance to do something similar. When you play on the subcontinent, it's vital to get used to the climate and the conditions. In Sri Lanka, I expect it to be hot and humid, so practising there would be far more useful than doing batting sessions in an indoor school.
Kanishkaa Balachandran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo