England remain unchanged

The England selectors have named an unchanged squad for the second Ashes test starting this coming Thursday at Edgbaston with the same 11 likely to take the field.

It was believed Paul Collingwood might have forced his way into the squad following a good run of form for Durham in county cricket recently.

Chairman of selectors David Graveney said “We don’t believe that there’s any need to change the team, clearly we are disappointed that the result of the first Test went against us, but we still have strong belief in the squad that was selected.”

“Obviously there were areas we needed to improve on in order to win the game, but the conclusion of the selectors was that we wanted to stick with the same squad for the second Ashes Test”.

In other news New Zealand umpire Billy Bowden has been called in to umpire the second test with Aleem Dar returning home following the premature birth of his wife’s baby.

England squad Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan (capt), Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff, Geraint Jones (wk), Ashley Giles, Simon Jones, Matthew Hoggard, Steve Harmison, Chris Tremlett.