England 'gamble' to avoid pink ball warm-up

ENGLAND have resisted calls to send senior players for a pink ball practice match ahead of the second Ashes Test, passing up the chance to spend more time in the middle.

- By RORY DOLLARD

A slipshod two-day defeat in the series opener at Perth left an 11-day gap in the tourists’ schedule before the day/night Test in Brisbane and opened up the option of using next weekend’s England Lions fixture in Canberra as a competitive tuneup for the first team.

Former captain Michael Vaughan said it would be “amateurish” not to send key men to the capital to experience a floodlit fixture against the Prime Minis ter's XI and head coach Brendon McCullum suggested he would be mulling over the possibility.

However, the decision has been made to keep the first-choice team together in Queensland, with squad play ers Josh Tongue, Jacob Bethell and Matthew Potts the only ones making the trip to Manuka Oval.