Moores backs opening pair

Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook have opened together on 27 occasions © Getty Images

Buy this photo

England coach Peter Moores has backed his opening partnership to deliver this winter and provide the launchpad for improved batting performances on their overseas tours.

In 14 Tests and 27 innings together as an opening pair Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss are yet to forge a century stand, with their best partnership of 95 coming in their first Test together against India in Nagpur 18 months ago.

But Moores is confident Cook and Strauss can become a success together and has been impressed by their work ethic to improve their performances during the summer.

“If you take Cook, he’s come through the final Test very well,” said Moores.

“He has had to modify himself a bit to adjust to the left-arm swing and I thought he did that really well.

“He did a good job and he’ll have learned a lot as a young player about the adjustments you need to make at this level to stay in the game - everyone looks at your play, everyone looks at your game and looks for weaknesses, and I think Andrew is going through a similar process.”

Strauss has suffered a lean spell over the last year, having failed to score a century in his last 25 Test innings, but Moores insisted: “People have worked hard at trying to work out his game and he’s shown that he’s coming out of that.

Peter Moores © Getty Images

Buy this photo

“He’s got a 77 and he’s got a 96 this summer and it would have been great for him to go on and get a hundred. He’s starting to hit the ball down the ground more and do different things and working extremely hard at his game.

“As a coach I’m happy with the way they’re tackling the challenges they’ve got, which is what you’re going to get in top-flight sport. It’s how you respond to those challenges that are the measure of the man.”

But captain Michael Vaughan blamed all the batsmen for England’s failure to post competitive scores - a failure which came back to haunt them with India ending an unbeaten home Test series run stretching back to 2001.

“In the first innings we haven’t got past 400 in any of the games and if you want to put sides like India under pressure you do have to get 400 or 450 in the first innings,” Vaughan stressed.

“That’s one of the areas we need to work on. The series has been a great spectacle because the art of swing bowling has been brought back to the game, which is something we haven’t seen a great deal of in the last few years.”

He added: “We’ve learned from the experience of playing against this side. We’ve all been asked different questions when we’ve batted about the angles we’ve had to face from the left-armers which is something we haven’t seen before.

“Our bowlers have been asked to bowl against some of the best batsmen to have played the game and they have done it with flying colours in some instances.

“But when we get on the plane on November 17 we’re going to have to come up with plans to try to get our Test match cricket back to winning ways in Sri Lanka.”