Gooch keen to restore confidence and pride to batsmen

Although England won both the one-day and Twenty20 legs of their recent series against Pakistan, an apparent inability to decipher their opponents’ spin bowlers saw them whitewashed over three Tests.

Gooch, starting life as a full-time member of Andy Flower’s backroom team having been promoted from a consultancy role, led an advance party to Colombo last week to iron out some of those batting flaws.

Acclimatisation to gruelling conditions was also on the cards for the likes of captain Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell and Matt Prior – who were not involved in the limited-overs matches against Pakistan – but there is no hiding the fact that Gooch’s top priority has been getting England’s batting line-up back on track.

“We were hopeful of winning the Test series and we created a winning opportunity in the second game, but were not good enough to take it,” he said.

“I think they (the batsmen) will be looking at this series to put things right.

“We were knocked down but the important thing is how you get up, how you go forward.

“Our skills didn’t match up and we were thoroughly beaten by Pakistan.

“That’s tough to take but you have to take it on the chin and think how you move forward from there. We have to work hard on technique and also on thinking patterns – how are we going to score our runs?

“Our players are capable of improving their performances against this type of bowling and being a lot better than we were against Pakistan.

“Only time will tell how much of an improvement we can actually make.”

England, meanwhile, were boosted by the rain-affected draw between New Zealand and South Africa – a result which means the Proteas cannot replace Flower’s side on top of the Test rankings before April 1.

That means England top the International Cricket Council’s annual list and will receive just over £110,000 in prize money.

The game was left with South Africa needing eight wickets for victory, while the Black Caps had overnight aspirations of chasing down 401 from their position of 137 for two. The second Test begins in Hamilton on Thursday.

“Does being number one dominate team meetings now?,” added Gooch. “No. What does dominate team meetings is how we are going to beat Sri Lanka, how we are going to beat the West Indies in the next series, how we are going to beat South Africa after that.”