CARDIFF — Australia coach Darren Lehmann has said the tourists are prepared to make changes for the second Ashes Test, amid speculation all-rounder Shane Watson is set to be dropped. England won the series opener by a crushing 169 runs with more than a day to spare in Cardiff Saturday. The match saw Watson twice out in familiar fashion, lbw in both innings for modest scores of 30 and 19, while Australia captain Michael Clarke only utilized his medium-paced bowling for 13 overs in the match. Watson has now fallen lbw 39 times during the course of a 59-match Test career repeatedly blighted by injuries, and has only passed 50 twice in his last 16 innings. With fellow seam-bowling all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, 11 years Watson's junior, waiting in the wings Australia has a ready-made alternative and Lehmann indicated it was one the tourists were considering deploying at Lord's, where the second Test starts Thursday. “At the end of day you don't want to be getting out lbw all the time and you want to make more runs,” Lehmann said Sunday. “Shane would be disappointed, so are we. “It's one of those things where you have to find a way and that's something we probably didn't do as a batting group, not just Shane. “We'll certainly look at the wicket and work out the best XI to win in those conditions and it means making changes, we'll make changes. “We can't control what just happened, what we can do is learn from it and make the right decisions going forward,” said Lehmann, looking to guide Australia to its first Ashes series win in Britain in 14 years. Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting told Sky Sports that Watson's place was under threat, saying: “There's a very big decision that needs to be made there...Watson hasn't bowled a lot in this Test.” Australia has fitness concerns over Mitchell Starc, its best bowler in Cardiff despite playing most of the match with a right ankle injury. The left-arm paceman took seven wickets on a slow Sophia Gardens pitch and now has just four days to be fit in time for Lord's. There have been suggestions that pitches for the series will be deliberately slow in order to nullify the threat of Australia's fast bowlers, appreciably quicker than their England counterparts. “We know what we're going to get in terms of wickets,” said Lehmann. But former England wicketkeeper Matt Prior said talk of ‘pitch-doctoring' was nonsense. “All this talk of the Cardiff pitch being engineered to help our bowlers is just ridiculous,” Prior wrote in his Independent Sunday column. “Cardiff is slow and low and always has been — it's like turning up at the Gabba (in Brisbane) or Perth and moaning that it's quick and bouncy and then accusing Australia of doctoring pitches. England names unchanged squad England has named an unchanged 13-man squad for the second Ashes Test at Lord's next week, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) said Sunday. The opening Test also marked the first match in charge for new England head coach Trevor Bayliss, 52, who was appointed Peter Moores' successor in May. The Australian said he had seen signs during the drawn Test series against New Zealand in May and June that England were poised to do something special but warned against complacency ahead of the Lord's Test. “There is a long way to go in this series. To win we will have to play some very good cricket.” Squad: Alastair Cook (captain), Moeen Ali, James Anderson, Gary Ballance, Ian Bell, Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler, Steven Finn, Adam Lyth, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Mark Wood. — Agencies
