“I’ll be speaking to the boys one on one to see where they’re at,” he says. “We’ll talk about what they could improve on, areas I want them to work on, and there will be the chance for them to tell me if there’s anything I can do to help them.
“We haven’t taken a backward step because we lost in Pakistan. We’re a young team that will struggle if we lose two or three players to injury. We don’t yet have that pool of players like the Aussies do, although we will in the near future.
“The fact we’ve been away from one another will help the enthusiasm levels going to India. The break will have done our bodies and minds the world of good. It’s good, too, that we’ve got out of 2005. It’s a fresh start. The Ashes were great, but we have to move on.”
One player the England captain will be especially keen to seek out during the two-day bonding session at Loughborough is Andrew Flintoff, of whom most is now expected, on and off the pitch. Asked whether he was concerned about the physical demands being made of his talismanic allrounder, Vaughan’s response is blunt: “Yes, I am. I’m worried that he could drain out fast.”
But the commercial demands worry him no less. “At home the expectation levels and demands are far greater than when he’s on tour,” Vaughan says. “What he does best is play cricket. When he’s at home he has to deal with many charities, many functions, many demands.”
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In particular, it seems, Vaughan casts an anxious eye at Flintoff’s benefit year, which was launched two weeks ago and is likely to eat into precious downtime over the coming hectic months. If alarm bells are ringing with the England management, then no wonder, because the committee running the benefit has arranged a string of high-profile events — not just at home, but also while England tour India and Australia.
Vaughan clings to the hope that things will be better once the team leaves for India on February 12, on the basis that at least then the management will be able to exert some degree of control over Flintoff, but other problems loom. Flintoff is contractually entitled to paternity leave when his second child arrives. The due date, March 21, coincides with the third Test in Bombay, and Vaughan is resigned to losing him.
Then there’s the fitness of Ashley Giles, the only credible Test spinner at Vaughan’s disposal. Giles’s chances of recovering from a hip operation in time to play a full part in the India Tests are fading. Were he to miss matches, the workload on Flintoff and the other fast bowlers would increase on a tour that is sure to witness testing levels of heat and humidity.
“Giles being fit is massive, because you’d hope he would bowl a lot of overs so we can rotate the seamers at the other end,” Vaughan says. “It’s important he gets himself in a mental frame to be out there if he can. If he’s too sore, we’re going to have to look at other areas, but Ash has played 52 Tests and to lose that amount of experience would be a big blow. To throw in an unknown or somebody who hasn’t played many Tests on a tour like this would be a big ask.”
One player who won’t be at the National Cricket Centre in Loughborough this week is Simon Jones, who has gone to Madras to complete his rehabilitation from the ankle surgery that forced him to miss Pakistan. Vaughan is delighted that Jones appears to have made a full recovery and will be interested to learn how his best exponent of reverse swing got on with the Indian SG balls in outdoor practice. He’s not holding his breath. “I can’t remember the ball reversing much the last time we were in India (in 2001). It swung conventionally in Mohali, and if conventional swing comes into play, we have the bowlers to utilise it.
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“If it does reverse, I’d like to see it reverse both ways, but I haven’t seen that happen much outside England. If it’s only fading in, batsmen will play it quite easily. If they think it might go away, like it did for us against Australia, you’re talking a different ball game.
“Simon’s a big player for us. People expect things of him. They’ll be saying, ‘You’re in the team, come on, reverse it both ways like you did at Trent Bridge and Old Trafford’. If it does, it will be fantastic, because I know we’ll be in the game. But if it doesn’t, I don’t want people saying he’s not the bowler he was.
“In places such as India and Pakistan you need a firecracker of a bowler who can bowl a few tricks to get you a breakthrough. We haven’t got the mystery of a Shoaib Akhtar or a spinner that can go the other way, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful by being disciplined. The toss might be a big factor — you win it, get a big score and put them under pressure.”
Vaughan, speaking at a coaching session at Headingley sponsored by Quorn, said that despite a second operation on his right knee in three years, he hadn’t thought about reducing his playing commitments to prolong his career. His surgeon told him that as long as he followed his exercise regime the knee should be okay, and Vaughan has spent much of the past few weeks building up his leg at Sheffield’s Institute of Sport. “The knee looks like it’s healed well.
Everything’s gone smoothly. I’m going to have to manage the knee very well away from games, but I’m looking forward to getting out there.”
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Vaughan is addicted to the captaincy and loath to contemplate giving up any part of it. Anybody who wins six Test series in a row, including one against Australia, is entitled to have a big say in his future, but there’s a nagging fear that England risk compromising their defence of the Ashes if they don’t take care of key players.
The most vulnerable appear to be the team’s best player (Flintoff) and the two oldest members (Giles and Vaughan), but while he expresses fears for the other two, Vaughan has little concern for himself and rejects any suggestion that he should step down from the one-day arena. “I love the captaincy,” he says. “It’s only natural in any job that you occasionally ask yourself, ‘Do I need this?’ That doesn’t mean the appetite’s gone. I ’m more eager to play than I have been for a long while. I want to keep going as long as I’m enjoying it and do the best job I can. I’ve had no thoughts of quitting one-dayers. I’ve got a World Cup in a year, and I want to play with a team with half a chance of being successful.”
However, the idea of resting key players from the occasional one-day match in the build-up to the Ashes has been discussed. “We have to go into the Ashes and hit the Australians with a fresh group of players. No disrespect to those who didn’t play, but the 11 or 12 who played in the Ashes are very important because they’ve had experience of winning, and that counts for a lot. Unless somebody sticks his hand up and demands to be picked, we’ve got to come back to those players.”