| Player: | AJ Strauss, DB Hair, BR Doctrove, MJ Procter |
| Event: | Pakistan in British Isles 2006 |
England captain Andrew Strauss has stressed his side had no part in the ball-tampering row that almost led Pakistan to call off their tour of England.
Strauss's team play Pakistan in a Twenty20 international here at the County Ground later Monday.
It will be the first match between the teams since England were awarded the fourth Test at The Oval following the unprecedented decision by the umpires to make Pakistan forfeit the match.
The tourists had refused to take the field having been earlier penalised for ball-tampering.
That sparked a sequence of events that threw the remainder of Pakistan's tour into doubt with the one-day leg of their trip, which sees Monday's match followed by a five-game limited overs series, only confirmed last Friday.
There were reports that England coach Duncan Fletcher may have had a role in the drama by mentioning the issue of ball-tampering to match referee Mike Procter - reports denied utterly by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
And Strauss said his men were too busy trying to fight back in the Test to cast suspicions on Pakistan.
"What has happened is nothing to do with England players at all from my point of view, so hopefully the good spirit that the game has been played in will continue in the one-dayers as well.
"We obviously got ourselves in a pretty dodgy position in the game so we spent a lot of time and thought on trying to extricate ourselves from the situation.
"These sort of things are best left to the officials rather than players."
Australian umpire Darrell Hair who, together with West Indian colleague Billy Doctrove, penalised Pakistan five runs for ball-tampering at The Oval, hit the headlines again when it was revealed he had offered his resignation from the International Cricket Council's elite panel of umpires in return for a paymet of 500,000 dollars.
"We were all pretty surprised by it but it's not something that we really want to focus on too much," Strauss said.
"From a cricketing point of view it's wasting a lot of time and effort to do so. Once we knew the series was going ahead as planned, it was important to prepare ourselves both mentally and physically for what is coming up.
"I don't think anyone wants to see a cricket game finish in that manner and it wasn't a great week for cricket full stop," said the Middlesex left-hander.
"Looking forward it's probably an opportunity, and responsibility of ours, to get cricket back in the news for the right reasons."
Pakistan's one-day contests in England five years ago were marred by crowd trouble and pitch invasions.
But both crowd and player relations have caused no alarms this season and Strauss said: "The crowd behaviour has been excellent through the Test series and we all want to see a good atmosphere at the grounds and the crowds getting stuck in.
"There have not been any problems between the two sides, there is a bit of respect there between the players and there have not been any issues between us at all."
For England, thrashed 5-0 at home to Sri Lanka in a one-day series concluded in July, the upcoming matches represent a chance to find some badly needed form in the shorther version of the game before next year's World Cup.
They have won just four of their last 19 one-day internationals - one of those against minnows Ireland and two in 'dead' contests against Pakistan and India.
"We need to make improvements from our defeat to Sri Lanka before a very busy winter of international cricket," Strauss said.
(Article: Copyright © 2006 AFP)