England call up Liam Plunkett as bowling cover for rest of ODI series against Australia

On the move: Liam Plunkett will leave England Lions in the Caribbean to join up with the squad in Australia Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Paceman Plunkett will leave the England Lions tour of the Caribbean to join the squad ahead of the seventh and final match in Perth on Sunday.

England's bowling stocks have been reduced to the bare bones in Australia with Ajmal Shahzad (hamstring) and Chris Tremlett (side strain) the latest players to be struck down by injury.

The duo will undergo scans tomorrow with fears they will join Tim Bresnan and Graeme Swann, who flew home early from the tour last week, on the sidelines.

Shahzad suffered a hamstring injury during yesterday's 51-run defeat in Brisbane, which saw England lose the series after falling behind 4-1, while Tremlett did not take his place due to a slight side strain.

With those concerns, England have opted to rush Plunkett, who last played for England during the tour of Bangladesh in March, from the other side of the world although, he will be unable to make it to Australia in time for Wednesday's sixth match in Sydney.

England team director Andy Flower said: "Liam Plunkett has been part of the England performance programme and England Lions squad this winter so we are confident that he will be ready to play a role for England should the need arise.

"We are waiting for an update on the injuries to Ajmal Shahzad and Chris Tremlett but with our preparations for the World Cup starting in less than a fortnight we need to prioritise getting our World Cup squad members fit and ready for the start of the tournament.

"We have two games left in this series and will be looking to end the tour with strong performances in Sydney and Perth."

England were given some good injury news today with long-term absentee Stuart Broad revealing he was ahead of schedule in his return from the stomach injury he suffered during the second Ashes Test in Adelaide.

The injury forced the 24-year-old to return home before Christmas but, after flying back to Australia to step up his recovery last week, the right-armer is hopeful he will be fit to return in England's first warm-up game against Canada in Dhaka on February 16.

"My recovery is going very well, I'm probably a little bit ahead of schedule," he said.

"I've probably bowled about 50-60% yesterday and I've pulled up fine this morning.

"Hopefully by the end of this Australian tour I will have come off near to a full run-up. My aim is to try and play the first warm-up game of the World Cup which is still two and a half to three weeks away.

"I'm hopeful for that."

Despite the number of injuries that have beset his fellow bowlers Broad is confident that England will have a clean bill of health when they play their World Cup opener against Holland on February 22 in Nagpur.

"The injuries are pretty minor so I don't think that is going to affect any balance to the World Cup squad or anything like that, but obviously it is a little bit frustrating in this series to have lost as many players as we have," he said.

"It's been hard to find the right balance that we will go into the World Cup with. You can't do anything about injuries in sport that's just the way it happens.

"We've had a lot of cricket on this tour, I think we've done well with the amount of injuries we've had."

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Cricket World Cup 2011: bowling attack holds the key to winning the World Cup, says Kevin Pietersen

Hard at work: Kevin Pietersen says England's skills have improved dramatically over the past year Photo: GETTY IMAGES

With the Ashes urn sitting alongside the World Twenty20 prize, Pietersen’s next wish is to reach the pinnacle of the 50-over format in Mumbai in April.

While England’s form has been patchy in the one-day series against Australia, Pietersen expects that to change when the first-choice bowling line-up of James Anderson, Stuart Broad (stomach injury), Tim Bresnan (calf) and Graeme Swann (knee and back) reunites for the World Cup. The squad’s rise over the year has convinced Pietersen that England are capable of winning the event for the first time.

“The batsmen have improved, the fielding is top notch, our catching is incredible and our bowling is so skilful,” Pietersen said in Brisbane. “We’ve shown Australia up in a huge way, with the difference in our bowling attack to their bowling attack this summer, with reverse swing and the skill at which we’ve gone about our business. Our skill levels are really, really good.”

England have reached the finals of three World Cups but the closest they came to winning was in 1987, when Australia beat them by seven runs at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens. However, this outfit is conditioned to breaking down barriers, having collected the Twenty20 trophy in the West Indies last year and then raised the urn in Australia for the first time in 24 years.

“The team has been amazing through the last 12 months, winning in the Caribbean, winning the Ashes, winning on Australia Day [in Adelaide] the other day was magnificent for us,” Pietersen said. “To cap off the 12 months with a 50-over World Cup would be pretty surreal. The boys are absolutely buzzing for it.”

The series in Australia is England’s last official on-field engagement before their hectic schedule turns them home for three days. They then head to Bangladesh for a couple of warm-up matches and the opening exchanges of the World Cup.

Players who have been with the squad since November have started to feel flat and a mixture of fatigue and a post-Ashes hangover contributed to the slow start to the limited-overs campaign. Life in the subcontinent will be even more hectic as the sides that reach the final in Mumbai face more than six weeks of navigating through Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India.

“Our schedule is ridiculous going into this World Cup,” Pietersen said. “It has been for England teams for a very long time. And that’s probably why England have not done well in World Cups.” The proximity of the Ashes tour and the World Cup, which both traditionally run in a four-year cycle, was a major reason for the unusual scheduling of back-to-back Australia-England Test series in 2013-14.

England’s exact World Cup itinerary is currently unclear after the stadium at Eden Gardens, which was due to host the match against India on February 27, was ruled unsuitable to host such an important encounter. “That was the huge game for us, for everybody,” Pietersen said. “So, yes, it’s disappointing, but it might work to our advantage playing at a ground where there’s not 120,000 [spectators] but 50,000.”

Whatever happens to England during the World Cup, Pietersen will be returning to India after the tournament. He was signed for US$650,000 by the Deccan Chargers IPL side this month, a fee which was less than half his US$1.55million price from Bangalore in 2009. The new value ranks him below his team-mates Dale Steyn, Cameron White, Daniel Christian and Kumar Sangakkara.

“It’s not a mere $650,000,” Pietersen said. “I’ve always said whatever you get in the IPL is an absolute bonus. We’re fortunate enough to have five weeks, and who earns that kind of money in five weeks? Nobody, unless you’re Rooney or Lampard or Ronaldo or John Terry. You look at it and just say, ‘We’re very fortunate’.” Despite his complaints about England’s draining schedule, Pietersen had no second thoughts about rejoining the IPL, preferring to cash-in rather than rest or play county cricket ahead of the international home summer.

“You’d be a fool not to put your name into the hat,” he said.

“All the England lads put their name in the hat for this IPL because you never know what’s round the corner. You want to potentially earn as much as you can earn, as well as making as many friends as you can along the way.”

Pietersen also faces a different Indian experience after admitting he didn’t know where the Deccan franchise was based. He will be spending most of his time in the information technology hub of Hyderabad, which could be valuable after his latest online misadventure.

He was furious that the winning bid of his Twitter auction to support Queensland’s flood victims was a fake. Initially Pietersen was hugely satisfied to learn his prize of a trip to Perth for the final one-day international against Australia next Sunday (Feb 6) had sold for £31,800.

When the winner was contacted he claimed his account had been broken into, leaving Pietersen hacked off. “It is so frustrating and disappointing that somebody can do that,” he said. “It’s as low as it gets, like looting a store after it’s been flooded.” Pietersen was left hoping one of the other bidders would make another offer in time to fly to the game. “I could only do what I’ve done,” he said. “I haven’t done absolutely anything to warrant this kind of thing.” The fourth one-day international in Brisbane turned into a fund-raiser for those affected by the devastating floods a fortnight ago, which killed 22 people and caused £2.5 billion of damage. Pietersen said the quick clean-up of the city — “it doesn’t look like anything has happened” — was “absolutely incredible”.

Australia’s players visited schools around Brisbane on Friday that were affected by the disaster and Michael Clarke, Australia’s captain, said the scene put his glamorous life in perspective. “We’ve seen so many houses where the actual structure was still there but the whole inside was destroyed, empty,” he said. “It was a little bit like a ghost town.”

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England's Jonathan Trott aims to become the new Paul Collingwood after successful bowling spell in fourth ODI

After producing a match-winning display with bat and ball in England's 21-run win in the fourth one-day international against Australia in Adelaide on Wednesday, Trott revealed he wants to fill the role Paul Collingwood has left in the Test side as a batting all-rounder.

Trott hit his second one-day century at the Adelaide Oval to be the cornerstone of England's 299 for eight - their highest total against Australia on their soil.

The 29 year-old then claimed the crucial wickets of Cameron White and David Hussey, who had been threatening England's total with a 60-run partnership.

While Trott knows he still has plenty of work to do to improve his self-confessed "bits and pieces" bowling - his wickets yesterday were his first in international cricket - he is hopeful he can play a role with the ball following Collingwood's retirement from Test cricket at the end of the Ashes.

"I've had a chat with (bowling coach) David Saker and we're going to work hard at that," he said.

"If I could bowl like Colly has in this tour then definitely I can help the side.

"When called upon to bowl it is always nice to contribute.

"I know how cricket can be, it can be a nice game and it can be a horrible game sometimes."

The Warwickshire right-hander admitted, however, that it was his 102 from 126 balls that gave him the most satisfaction yesterday.

Trott also praised Matt Prior's heavy-handed 67 from 58 balls at the top of the order, after the wicketkeeper-batsman had been under some scrutiny following back-to-back ducks since his surprise World Cup call, for allowing him to construct his match-winning innings, which included six boundaries.

"Obviously I'm in the team to get hundreds. I was very happy to do that and set up a very good total," he said.

"With the way Matt Prior was going, for me is was just knocking it around and picking up the odd boundary when it came around - he always made it easier for me.

"When we lost the three wickets it was important that we didn't have what happened in Sydney with a progression of wickets.

"It was important that I hung around.

"I was a little bit disappointed to get out in the manner I did towards the end with the powerplay looming.

"That's something to work on for future games with batting and setting totals or chasing them."

Trott's century was his third of a hugely-successful tour to leave Australia stand-in skipper Michael Clarke in no doubt that the right-hander, who has not always been a one-day regular, has a key role to play for England ahead of the start of the World Cup next month.

"I think the earlier he gets in probably the better for him and the more it suits his game and allows him to play freely," he said.

"He's in pretty good nick and he batted really well. I thought he held the innings together really well, the other guys had the opportunity to play around him."

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