Marcus Trescothick is determined to sign off as England’s interim head coach with a 100% record and has no plans to meddle with a winning formula in next week’s final Test of the summer, despite securing the series win by beating Pakistan at Lord’s. Two successful games into a series, the most likely cause of a lineup change would be fatigue, but Pakistan have not forced England to toil unduly over their two wins – last summer the average India innings lasted 107.5 overs; this summer Pakistan’s figure is 43.3. Meanwhile winning the second Test on day four means the players have nine clear days before action resumes at Edgbaston.
Once we know that we’ll be able to make that decision. So it’s not a case of we’re going to ease off the gas. We want to go there and win the series 3-0, and that is exactly what I’ll be telling the players when we’re prepping, [to keep] the hunger and desire to keep driving forward even when you’ve had success.” While England wrapped up victory in the opening Test inside three days, and Lord’s underlined its recent reputation as a difficult ground for batting, they will remember that their last visit to Edgbaston followed a different script.
Last summer India scored 1014 runs there, the most by any touring team in any Test in this country since Australia ran amok at the Oval in 1934, with Bill Ponsford getting 266 and Don Bradman 244 in their first innings on their way to an aggregate of 1028. Horses for courses, if you want to put it that way,” Trescothick said. I’m expecting it to be different to the conditions we’ve had in the last two games – as we’ve seen when we played India last summer, it was a pitch for many more runs.
Once we get a bit more information on the lads and then see the conditions, then we can make better decisions.” England’s four-pronged seam attack of Ollie Robinson, Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson have impressed in the last two games, and Trescothick believes they will become more potent with more time spent playing together. No doubt next summer when we come back here for the Ashes they’ll be in a much better position than what they’ve been for the last couple of years. What we have is three guys bowling at 92mph, which is really nice to have in your armoury.
And the more they play together, and the more experience everyone gets together, then it sort of fits into place how you want it to be. I’m enjoying the fact that we’ve got four who are match-fit at the moment, and a few behind it that we’re starting to get ready.”
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