Wright backs England for trophy

Luke Wright believes that England are on the right road for Champions Trophy glory

Luke Wright is confident the current England one-day side can end their long wait to finally win a global event if they can continue developing during the remainder of the summer.

The Sussex all-rounder has been one of the major finds of the last year and is evolving nicely into a hard-hitting opener and useful seam bowler since making his debut last summer.

He has joined a squad of emerging talents like Stuart Broad and Ravi Bopara, who have enjoyed comprehensive victories over New Zealand in both the Twenty20 International and the opening match of the NatWest Series last Sunday before rain denied a result in Wednesday's match at Edgbaston.

But as the two sides prepare to meet again for the third game in the five-match series in Bristol tomorrow, Wright believes there is now a nucleus there to begin challenging for major events - perhaps starting with September’s ICC Champions Trophy tournament in Pakistan.

“I think we showed in the Twenty20 and in the match in Durham how good a side we are when we play well,” stressed 23-year-old Wright.

“The boys are all confident and we all believe we’ve got a really good squad and we still have people like Andrew Flintoff to come back into that as well.

“We’re confident we can go out to Pakistan and do well, but we have to develop during this summer. Our main focus is trying to win this series, but New Zealand showed on Wednesday what a good side they are.

“They’re third in the one-day rankings and they put us under a lot of pressure, but I’m sure if we play to the best of our ability we can reproduce the type of performance we gave at Durham in the next match.”

Should Wright be correct in his optimism and England do well in the ICC Champions Trophy, it would be their first major challenge for a global tournament since reaching the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy final on home soil, only to lose to West Indies.

Captain Paul Collingwood stressed: “We’re developing as a one-day side with some exciting new players coming through and I believe that this tournament will be a great opportunity for us to test ourselves against the best in the world.

“We’ve come close to winning the Champions Trophy before and would love to go one better this time. In England, in 2004, we played some excellent cricket – beating Australia in the semi-final – and were very disappointed to lose to West Indies in the final after getting ourselves into a very good position to win the game.

“Most of our squad have the experience of playing in Pakistan. We have played plenty of cricket in the sub-continent in recent years so I am sure we will be able to adjust to the conditions quickly and we will be very keen to make a big impact on the tournament.”