England will blow off the cobwebs from their post-Edgbaston celebrations with a game of football at Nottingham Forest’s training ground as they turn their attention to Thursday’s fourth Ashes Test at Trent Bridge with Ian Bell warning that Australia are likely to hit back hard.
Leading the series 2-1 after Friday’s eight-wicket win in Birmingham, Alastair Cook’s side have opted to forgo a scheduled day off on Monday for some additional batting practice before heading along the bank of the Trent for a kickabout at the Championship club’s academy.
The session has been organised by Nick Peirce, chief medical officer of the England and Wales Cricket Board and club doctor at Forest, with assistance from Stuart Broad, who will this week step up as leader of the England bowling attack on his home ground in the absence of Jimmy Anderson, who has a side strain.
Two draws would enable England to regain the Ashes but with all three Tests so far failing to reach a fifth day, Bell is expecting positive results for whichever side in the final two matches of the series. “I don’t see there being any draws in this series,” England’s No3 batsman said. “We fully expect Australia to come back harder and this is going to go right to the wire. We have to front up because the next two weeks are going to be extremely hard.”
Football returned as part of England’s pre-match preparations when Paul Farbrace took over as interim coach at the start of the summer before the arrival of Trevor Bayliss in late June. And while the squad’s obsession with the sport is somewhat lost on their Australian head coach, Bell believes the impact of Bayliss’s relaxed approach has already been felt in their own comeback from the 405-run defeat at Lord’s in the second Test.
“Trevor is an old school cricket coach,” Bell told BBC’s Sportsweek. “He is very relaxed through the highs and lows. We had a real tough week at Lord’s and I don’t think he put any pressure on the players at all. He wanted the guys to go out and express themselves this week. He is going to be a fantastic England coach for as long as possible. Hopefully we can carry on playing that kind of cricket for him.”
The Australia batting coach, Michael Di Venuto, meanwhile, has tipped the left-hander Shaun Marsh to enter the thoughts of the selectors, with the form of the captain, Michael Clarke, and No5 Adam Voges, who had a second-innings golden duck at Edgbaston, an ongoing concern.
The 32-year-old Marsh struck centuries in the tour matches with Kent and Derbyshire and could replace Voges, whose place is in doubt despite five seasons of experience of playing at Trent Bridge during his time with Nottinghamshire.
“Shaun’s just got to the stage where he’s really comfortable with his game,” said the former Durham batsman Di Venuto. “He knows how to score runs, and now he’s turning it into hundreds. There’s someone who’s ready to go.”
As with the buildup to the Edgbaston Test, all eyes will turn to the pitch at Trent Bridge with the groundsman Steve Birks under increased pressure given last year’s slow, low surface for the draw with India that was graded as “poor” by the International Cricket Council match referee David Boon and resulted in Nottinghamshire receiving an official warning.
