David Graveney Cricket Quotations

With Liam Plunkett and James Anderson performing well in Pakistan, and Simon Jones now available for selection again, the selectors feel the priority is for these players to gain as much experience of one-day cricket as possible ahead of the World Cup and as a result Darren misses out.

Although we lost the series, there were some encouraging individual performances from players who are new to test cricket and we are keen to continue their development.

Darren would like to make it clear that he has not decided to retire from one-day international cricket and the selectors fully understand his reasons.

Darren asked the selectors not to consider him for the tour of Pakistan for personal reasons and we respected his wishes. With Liam Plunkett and James Anderson performing well in Pakistan and Simon Jones now available for selection again, the selectors feel the priority is for these players to gain as much experience of one-day cricket as possible ahead of the World Cup.

In choosing our Test squad we wanted to show faith with the same group of players who have performed extremely well for England over the past two years. Although we lost the series, there were some encouraging individual performances from players who are new to Test cricket and we are keen to continue their development.