England look to the Champions Trophy to gloss over a bleak tour of India, where Jos Buttler’s side lost both white-ball series and were whitewashed 3-0 in the ODIs.
While practice sessions under McCullum are now optional, England did train at least six times on the tour but eight matches in the space of 22 days, all in different cities, leaves little wiggle room for players to iron out kinks.
While Archer, Brydon Carse and Jamie Overton all have niggles and Jamie Smith has been sidelined since the T20 series, England expect the quartet to be fit to face Australia.
But that went up a notch in Ahmedabad as Ravi Shastri and Kevin Pietersen speculated about their preparation, with England not training for the last two ODIs amid an exhaustive travel schedule and mounting injury problems.
While England have taken a battering in India, a change of scenery and opposition – after Australia comes Afghanistan and South Africa in the group stages – might be just the tonic.
