England given little respite

There will be no respite for England's battered players after New South Wales announced a full-strength team for the day-night limited overs match at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday.

It was meant to be a warm-up for the forthcoming one-day triangular series involving England, Sri Lanka and Australia but the English batsmen will face their chief tormentor, Glenn McGrath, and the Waugh twins, Steve and Mark.

Lancashire's Andrew Flintoff provided the perfect response to criticism of his professionalism with a spirited return just as Darren Gough championed his cause by blaming England's management for Flintoff's failure to recover fully from a summer hernia operation.

No sooner had news arrived that Lord MacLaurin, the outgoing chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, had claimed that Flintoff "was doing things in his recuperation that he probably shouldn't have" the Lancashire all-rounder hit 98 off 66 balls in a game between members of England's one-day squad and the Academy before bowling 10 overs.

Gough believes England were wrong to play an unfit Flintoff in the third Test against India at Headingley this summer knowing he needed an operation and that Flintoff was rushed into action too soon on the Ashes tour when he was asked to prove his fitness in the final warm-up game before the first Test only to be later ruled out.

"I was disgusted with what Lord MacLaurin said because Andy Flintoff is fitter now than he's ever been in his whole career. He trains hard every day. He had the surgery pretty late because yet again he was doing things to please England. He had the operation probably two or three weeks later than he should have, and it can take longer to recover from than you think."

NEW SOUTH WALES (v England, Sydney, Friday): S R Waugh (capt), C J Richards, M E Waugh, M G Bevan, M J Clarke, S M Katich, B J Haddin, B Lee, S C G MacGill, N W Bracken, G D McGrath. 12th man: D J Thornely.

* Wasim Akram has opted out of Pakistan's two-Test series against South Africa starting later this month.