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Old 05-10-2004, 04:32 PM in reply to Notts Exile's post starting "Of that lot Bopara, Bresnan, Cook,..."
Glamorgan Wanderer Glamorgan Wanderer is offline
WAT selector - England A 2005
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Reading
My main national team: England
My other team/s: Glamorgan
Posts: 452
I know that Vaughan, Trescothick and Anthony McGrath played for the same England U19 side (I watched them play against India U19 at Cardiff) and a very young Flintoff may have been there or thereabouts too.

Owais Shah lead the England side which won the U19 World Cup and that side also included Stephen Peters who was the Alistair Cook of his day but unfortunately hasn't been able to progress as well as was expected.

English players seems to mature later than those on the sub-continent (or indeed those in any of the other test nations). It is very rare that players (and in particular batsmen) perform well at the highest level in their teens/early twenties and most drop out of the side with the best coming back to succeed in their second spells (Stewart and Hussain being good examples). The best policy to get immediate returns out of English players seems to be to select them in their mid to late 20s (recent examples include Strauss and G Jones).