By Rob Barnett
England Head Coach Peter Moores has reported a fully fit squad a day before the tourists’ first warm-up game for their seven one-day internationals with Sri Lanka.
Moores has all 15 of his players available for the first of two 50-over matches versus Sri Lanka A. Tomorrow’s fixture is at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground and the second is at the P Sara Oval, both in Colombo.
Speaking at Nondescripts Cricket Club, where England trained today having worked at tomorrow’s venue the previous two days, Moores said: “Everybody’s fit.
“We won’t be fully acclimatised yet, I think after three days. We’ve managed to get the practices in. There’s been a bit of rain around. It’s hot, it’s humid, but it’d be great to get a practice game up and running tomorrow.”
Ian Bell, Joe Root and Ben Stokes showing their class in the nets ahead of our warm-up game tomorrow #SLvEnghttps://t.co/uVBWkWcEq8
— England Cricket (@ECB_cricket) November 20, 2014
Moores chose not to reveal England’s team for Friday, which will play an ‘A’ side drawn from an experienced squad featuring senior internationals like Dinesh Chandimal, Niroshan Dickwella, Lahiru Gamage, Dilruwan Perera and Ashan Priyanjan.
“We’ve talked about the side for tomorrow,” Moores continued. “It’s a warm-up game. We’ll be desperately keen to go and win that game.
“We’ve got two of them to create opportunities for people to stake their claim for the first ODI, when it starts on Wednesday.”
Moores is honing his first-choice XI for the World Cup, albeit without frontline seamers James Anderson and Stuart Broad who are recovering from knee problems.
However, the Head Coach has to balance that task with trying to beat Sri Lanka, where the conditions differ greatly to World Cup co-hosts Australia and New Zealand.
“We spoke about the World Cup and we spoke about this series,” he added.
“At the moment we’re trying to find a settled combination as a team. I think anyone whose watched us play (knows) we haven’t played as well as we’d have wanted to.
“There’s certain slots up for grabs and it’s a case of ‘will people get a chance to go out and grab them?’. That starts really on this tour.
“We’ve got to try and win this tour first, but it would be daft not to be thinking forward to the World Cup because obviously that’s a huge tournament that’s going to happen in the next six months.”