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<\/p>\nEngland have defended their decision to play only one warm-up game in Australia in preparation for the Ashes, which start in Perth next week.<\/p>\n
The tourists held their first full training session at Lilac Hill Park on the outskirts of Perth on Tuesday ahead of their solitary three-day match against the England Lions, effectively their B side, that starts on Thursday. The first Test at the city\u2019s Optus Stadium then begins next Friday.<\/p>\n
While playing a single warm-up fixture has become the norm under head coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes in recent years, having only one game to acclimatise to local conditions is a far cry from England\u2019s previous Ashes tours. In 2010-11, the last tour on which England even won a Test in Australia, the team played three preparation matches \u2014 against Western Australia, South Australia and Australia A respectively \u2014 which amounted to 10 days of competitive cricket.<\/p>\n
Even England\u2019s previous tour in 2021-22, which was impacted by the Covid pandemic, featured two warm-up matches over seven days against the Lions squad. The tourists went on to lose the Ashes series 4-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the way a series is generally done for us and for other opposition teams around the world nowadays, with the volume of cricket that\u2019s played,\u201d said England\u2019s assistant coach, Marcus Trescothick, during a press conference at the team\u2019s training camp on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have the time for preparations like potentially playing two or three first-class games. You generally roll with a prep game or some facilities, whatever you have available, and you go from there. Most of the guys have been playing in New Zealand for us (in two recent white-ball series). Some have come out from England.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are doing isn\u2019t anything different for when we went to New Zealand, Pakistan or anywhere else. And it isn\u2019t any different for when India or Australia came to England.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe volume of cricket that\u2019s now played around the world and the amount of white-ball cricket into red-ball cricket \u2014 the opportunities are not there. And the intensity of playing five Test matches, if we were to go and play two or three warm-up games on top of that, having done it myself in the past, it\u2019s very tricky once you get to the back end of a series to still be mentally as fresh as you need to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, this is the situation and we\u2019re happy with what we\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson arrive in Perth ahead of the Ashes series (Paul Kane\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Stokes and McCullum have overseen five away series since taking up the reins of the national side and all have had either one or no warm-up fixtures. England prevailed in the first Test of each, going on to win two of the resultant series. Yet, given the conditions England\u2019s white-ball players confronted in New Zealand for their ODI and Twenty20 fixtures, they will need to make good use of the three-day fixture against the Lions as they seek to adapt to Australia.<\/p>\n
The track at the Optus Stadium has followed the formidable reputation of the WACA Ground, which it has effectively superseded since it opened in 2018 and was renowned as the fastest and bounciest pitch in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had facilities here (at Lilac Hill) with the nets and then out in the middle, and then we\u2019ve got the preparation game here,\u201d said Trescothick. \u201cMy day playing at the WACA was unique and very different, but you prepare yourself for those changes in facilities and pitches as you go along. We\u2019ll have three days of prep at Optus just to get used to the pitches and we\u2019ll go from there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team has stuck together for a long period of time. It\u2019s been very consistent and we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019ve been playing good cricket in our Test stuff. It\u2019s been pretty consistent for a number of years, so we\u2019re pretty confident in our own team and what we have to throw at Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The warm-up match should give England\u2019s players a chance to find their rhythm ahead of the first Test, and fast bowler Mark Wood could feature for the first time since February following knee surgery. But Trescothick admitted the fixture is unlikely to sway selection too drastically for the start of the Ashes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess everybody\u2019s got an opportunity to stake their claim, but we\u2019ve not really chopped and changed a great deal, so (the team) is definitely not going to change dramatically now before the start of the Ashes series, just because somebody puts their hand up and takes five wickets or gets 150,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team\u2019s been what it has been for a period of time for a reason, so that when you come to a big series, you\u2019re more settled and confident going into it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England have defended their decision to play only one warm-up game in Australia in preparation for the Ashes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,11880,85],"class_list":["post-277543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-global-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}