England 's interim managing director Sir Andrew Strauss has defended the controversial decision to drop both James Anderson and Stuart Broad for their tour of the West Indies, despite the injury problems which have blighted the series so far.
Ollie Robinson missed the first Test after suffering back spasms and failed to recover in time for the second. Mark Wood also picked up an elbow problem in the first Test which could sideline him for the remainder of the tour.
Craig Overton, who opened the bowling alongside Chris Woakes in Antigua, has also missed the second Test after falling ill, with England handing Test debuts to Saqib Mahmood and Matthew Fisher. Despite the raft of problems which has already affected England's seam attack, Strauss insisted he has no regrets over dropping Anderson and Broad.
"I think the reaction was entirely predictable," Strauss said of the decision. "You don't do these things worried about what the reaction is, you do them because you think it's the right thing to do.
"It's great to see Matt Fisher and Saqib Mahmood as part of the England set up. I think we're learning about them all the time and they're getting more and more comfortable in this group.
"As we said right at the start it's forced some of our senior players to have slightly different roles. It's early days but the feedback I'm getting from the dressing room is they're accepting the challenge of not having those senior players involved and I thought the attitude, willingness to do hard graft, spirit and togetherness were there to see in Antigua.
"We didn't get the result we wanted but there were a lot of positives coming out of it." Strauss also revealed that he expects a new permanent head coach to be in place ahead of England's first home Test of the year against New Zealand in June.
"The ambition is certainly to have the Test coach in place by that first Test of the summer," he explained. "With recruitments there are all sorts of moving pieces, including notice periods. I don't think we can categorically say that, but it's the ambition."
Strauss was also asked about the prospect of splitting the head coach role between red and white ball cricket and admitted he would like to see England do just that. He said: "Ultimately, that will be the new director of cricket's decision to make. My perspective is that it's time to go down that route.
"We have unique schedules in this country. It is very hard to plan, prepare, play and review for one coach doing all formats. There are opportunities for us to make some performance gains in that respect. But again, that'll be up to the new director of cricket."
On his own future, Strauss added: "I haven't considered that really. I've got unique personal circumstances that makes doing that role difficult and quite frankly there's always value in getting a new perspective and new views.
"Nothing ever stays the same or goes backwards. I'm certain there's going to be some good candidates for this role."
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