LONDON, Feb 12: Mirroring the poverty of England’s current spin resources, the national team fly to the spiritual home of slow bowling on Sunday with a trio of spinners boasting just three Test wickets between them.

The three-Test visit to India was always going to represent a stern test of temperament and technique for England’s Ashes heroes after their 2-0 series loss in Pakistan late last year.

Now with Ashley Giles unavailable for at least the start of the two-month tour after a hip operation, England have turned to 36-year-old Hampshire off spinner Shaun Udal and two untried left-armers.

Udal, the only one of the three with Test match experience, had a daunting baptism in Pakistan as backup to Giles.

Unable to get any turn with his finger spin Udal’s three wickets cost 92.33 runs apiece. His rivals for a Test spot in India will be left-armer Monty Panesar, the first Sikh to represent England, and Somerset’s Ian Blackwell who have yet to appear in the Test arena.

Panesar, whose batting and fielding can euphemistically be described as under-developed, is an old-fashioned left armer who combines flight and spin. Blackwell bowls flatter and faster and is also a useful lower-order batsman without looking true Test class in either discipline.

“It’s pretty inexperienced,” England coach Duncan Fletcher acknowledged in a BBC radio interview on Sunday. “But those players are capable. They bowled well during the English summer last year.

“It is asking a lot in India, Ashley Giles is a huge loss and we need a left-arm spinner.”

On a more positive note, Fletcher can welcome back captain Michael Vaughan, who left Pakistan early with a recurrence of a troubling knee injury, and fast bowler Simon Jones, who missed the entire tour after an ankle operation.

Jones blossomed into a world class bowler against Australia last year, bending the ball late with conventional and reverse swing at high pace.

His value to England is two-fold. Jones’s skiddy action and ability to reverse the old ball give Vaughan an extra weapon against the long line of accomplished Indian batsmen.

Just as importantly, he will take the pressure off Andy Flintoff who was bowled into the ground on the unforgiving Pakistan pitches.

“We needed Simon Jones’s type of bowling which balances our bowling attack,” said Fletcher.

Inevitably pace bowling will be the key to England’s success, as it was against Australia last year.

Steve Harmison will have to recapture the menace with the new ball that he has shown only fleetingly since his heroics of 2004 and Matthew Hoggard needs to repeat the control he showed in the 2001-2 series when he conceded only 2.5 runs an over.

Then there is Flintoff, one of the few players in history who can turn a match with bat or ball.

Fletcher said he was relishing the varied challenges of a country where even the mighty Steve Waugh failed to lead Australia to victory.

“It will be a very tough series,” he said. “Most countries who have gone there have found it pretty tough going.

“But it’s a challenge we have got to lift ourselves up for. It is the one area of the sub-continent where we haven’t won since I have been involved with England. We’ve got to go out there and place some very good cricket.”—Reuters