Moores defends draw

Peter Moores, the England A coach, defended the performance of his side against Pakistan at Canterbury, which ended in a drab draw.

"It's disappointing when a game finishes like that, we came here to win the game, prepared very hard for it because it is a key time for English cricket and we wanted to make a statement." Moores told reporters at Canterbury.

"To be fair to our players, the way Robert Key and Ian Bell played set the game up and when we were in trouble against the second new ball Alex Loudon and Chris Read got us out of it. When it came to the Pakistan innings, we didn't expect to be able to bowl them out that cheaply."

Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan coach, however, saw the matter differently. "People here would have seen the same game as I did and if I had been a member of the public I would not have been too pleased with what was going on," he said, with particular reference to England's decision to continue batting till the third day of this four-day warm-up match.

England A declared their first innings at 595 and then bowled Pakistan out for 242. But instead of enforcing the follow-on, they batted again, setting Pakistan a target of 507. Pakistan batted out the fourth day with Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mohammad Yousuf still at the crease at stumps. Ten England players bowled in Pakistan's second innings, though none got any wickets as Salman Butt and Imran Farhat retired after batting for a while.

"I can understand why England did it but I don't agree with it," Woolmer added. "I assume that the England A side wanted to play it hard and keep us in the field as long as they could to tire our bowlers out. When that became obvious we stopped bowling our main seamers. It is not going to affect our preparation, if anything it is going to make us more steely about what we have to do in the Test series

Apart from the uneventful nature of the game, there were fresh injuries to both squads. While Mohammad Sami (knee) and Mohammad Asif (elbow) are likely to miss the first Test, Mathew Hoggard endured six stitches on his bowling hand after his team-mate Tim Bresnan stepped on it during training.