England have announced an unchanged team for the second cricket Test against India as their experienced pace bowler Matthew Hoggard was still to recover fully from a back injury ahead of the match starting at Trent Bridge in Nottingham on Friday.
Hoggard had also missed the drawn opener at Lord’s due to back spasms and selectors feel he is yet to regain full fitness.
“We did not consider Matthew Hoggard for this (second) Test match on cricketing grounds. He is making progress in his recovery from a back injury and came through a preliminary fitness test at the ECB National Cricket Centre today (Monday),” said chairman of selectors David Graveney. Graveney said he was impressed with the performance of an England bowling attack, which was sans experienced trio of Hoggard, Andrew Flintoff and Stephen Harmison.
“There were many positive aspects to our performance in the first Test and we were particularly impressed by the efforts of our inexperienced bowling attack ,” he said.
Squad: Michael Vaughan (capt), Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood, Ian Bell, Matt Prior (wk), Ryan Sidebottom, Chris Tremlett, Monty Panesar, James Anderson, Stuart Broad.