India v England: Tourists ready for toughest marathon of all The general culture in cricket has been to look at the next game and win the next game. Clearly every time you put the England shirt on is important and we will never put a team out on the field that we do not think can win that game. Having said that we want to make sure if we believe a player is going to suffer in the longer term then we will manage their workload. Don't be surprised that given we have 10 Ashes Test matches, which are high priority and what we are about, that we will be leaving players out early part of the summer. It is definitely a possibility [they will miss the New Zealand Tests]. Andy Flower has already cut his own workload by giving up the coaching of the one-day side and there is more sympathy now towards resting senior players with young families. But there is a gorilla in the dressing room in the shape of the Indian Premier League. It remains hard for England to rest senior players during the early part of the summer when those such as Kevin Pietersen have very lucrative IPL contracts. Part of the original disagreement with Pietersen last summer, long before he texted his South African friends, was his desire to cut his England workload so he could play in the IPL longer than the three weeks allowed in central contracts. The Professional Cricketers" Association is attempting to solve this problem during the current negotiations over the terms and conditions of the next batch of central contracts. The idea of a reward system for older players has been mooted which would see those who have served England for longer than eight years allowed time to pursue commercial interests such as playing in the IPL, perhaps rather than constantly being on England duty. "We are going to have to start seeing series against sides like Sri Lanka and New Zealand as development series when it is about giving opportunities to blood new players and give them experience as much as it is about winning," said Angus Porter, the chief executive of the PCA. There is a recognition now that we can only go so far in terms of always getting the best side out on the park all of the time. When you rest players the focus needs to be not on the players being rested but on the opportunity it creates for the development of another player. The ECB have got their brains around this and the opportunities it creates so we are not dropping an inexperienced player into the middle of an Ashes series. This is not a debate just being held in England. Australia, who have lost a string of young fast bowlers to injury, have adopted squad rotation for the first time, after studying how it works in football and Aussie Rules. The most prominent example was Mitchell Starc, rested from the next match after taking five for 63 in a Test against Sri Lanka. Even that epitome of Australian Alpha male, and a man who was rarely injured, Glenn McGrath, agrees. "It's no longer a team of 11 or 12 players, it's a squad of 20 and that's the way they have to look at it," he says. McGrath, who took 563 wickets in 124 Tests, knows it is not just time spent on the park. Even a home summer for England players is spent in hotel rooms with practice days before each match adding up a schedule more onerous than many overseas tours. "It is not an exact science but we know the players pretty well," said Morris. There will be grown-up conversations between the management and the players. We look at amount of balls they bowl, days they play and nights away from home. All have an accumulative effect.