No Vaughan back-up expected

England will resist naming batting cover for captain Michael Vaughan when the squad for the first Test against South Africa is revealed.

Vaughan, 33, has played 15 consecutive Tests since returning from a fourth operation on his right knee, but the joint has provided soreness in recent days.

"Not at this stage," national selector Geoff Miller said. "I was with Michael (the other day) and I think everything is under control with him. There was a kind of minor thing but we have got on top of it."

He added: "Even so, if anything crops up, we don't need to pick players as cover because we know the people that would come in and we know where those people are."

One-day players Owais Shah and Ravi Bopara, both tourists with England last winter, would be obvious candidates to fill in if a deterioration of the knee occurred.

One argument for including an extra batsman in the official party, however, would be that it may have acted as a warning to an under-performing group to buck their ideas up.

England last scored 400 in a first innings 13 Tests ago and of the established top six only Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Strauss average in excess of 40 since.

But with Andrew Flintoff being held back until the second npower Test at the earliest, national selector Miller is likely to name an unchanged 12-man squad at Lord's on Thursday lunchtime.