Knight keen to take chance as England rest four

England have rested four players for tomorrow's one-day warm-up against a Board President's XI in Colombo.

Trescothick, Gough, Stewart and White - all certainties for the International on Friday - will enjoy an extra day of rest after the excursions of the Test series.

Nick Knight Photo © CricInfo

Alleyne will keep wicket and open the batting tomorrow, illustrating his remarkable versatility and value to the England team considering that he is primarily a seam-bowling middle-order batsman in county cricket.

The bowling will be opened by Mullally and Caddick while Andrew Flintoff is given the opportunity to impress with the bat coming in at five, ahead of stand-in captain, Thorpe, at six.

One of the new-comers to Sri Lanka, Nick Knight, has been talking about the atmosphere surrounding the England squad at present, following their four consecutive series wins.

"It's a great team to be around right now, there's nothing better than a winning team; there's a lot more self-belief and confidence flying around and that rubs off on you."

Knight admitted that the one-day players had been in a strange position watching England win the final Test: "We're on the outside looking in and you want to be part of that success," he admitted, adding that that there was a positive aspect to that feeling, "When you see all these things going on you want to be part of it even more. It spurs you on because you know it's going to be hard getting back into the Test side and now they are winning it's going to make it even harder."

Knight was philosophical about the likelihood of batting down the order, despite his excellent one-day record for England as an opener. But for a hand injury, sustained against the West Indies at Lord's, Knight is aware that Marcus Trescothick may not have come into the side and, in effect, taken Knight's place. Trescothick made his England debut during the triangular one-day tournament last summer, and impressed so much that he won a Test place.

"Life's not fair sometimes. Marcus has done well, you can't take anything away from him and I suppose that's just hard luck for me. I can't dwell on it that much because what I've done is still there and the belief in my own ability is still there and I just have to hope I can do it again when my chance arrives."

Looking forward to the Sri Lankan series though, Knight was confident that England could withstand a backlash from their hosts following the Test success.

"Sri Lanka will come back at us with some venom I'm sure because the Test series result would have been a massive blow to them and they'll try and come back and win this one.

"We're not going to be worrying too much about that because there's so much buoyancy in the team at the moment that we know if we play well that won't matter. That's not us being arrogant, but we have to do what we have to do and that is probably going to be good enough."