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England’s selectors have named an unchanged 12-man squad for the third Test against India at The Oval on Thursday. Stuart Broad, who was left out of the starting line-up at both Lord’s and Trent Bridge, is again included in the squad.

There had been some newspaper speculation that the Essex allrounder, Ravi Bopara, might be added to the 12, but England have kept faith with the side that lost a fractious second Test last week, after narrowly failing to force victory on the final morning at Lord’s.

“While India fully deserved their victory at Trent Bridge, there were many positive aspects to our performance,” said England’s chairman of selectors, David Graveney. “We were particularly pleased with the way our inexperienced bowling attack performed and they will be hoping to build on that in the final Test.”

England’s senior bowlers - Andrew Flintoff, Stephen Harmison and Matthew Hoggard - are on the comeback trail after their various injuries, with Flintoff featuring during Lancashire’s defeat in the Twenty20 semi-final on Saturday, but the selectors chose not to consider them.

“Flintoff, Harmison and Hoggard are all making good progress in their recovery from injury,”said Graveney, “but the selectors felt it was too soon to consider them for Test cricket and we have retained the same twelve players who were on duty at Trent Bridge.

“We have been one-nil down before in Test series and come back to draw or win a series and I am sure that the players will be conscious of that and very keen to maintain our impressive record at home in Test cricket.”

England squad Michael Vaughan, James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen, Matthew Prior, Monty Panesar, Ryan Sidebottom, Andrew Strauss, Chris Tremlett

Source:Cricket News