Flower to rest key England players

England international cricket coach Andy Flower may rest some of his key players as they face a hectic schedule over the rest of 2010.

The team are still celebrating after their impressive victory in the ICC World Twenty20 tournament, but they are due to play a Test series against Bangladesh in the coming weeks.

England are also scheduled to play Pakistan in a series of ODIs, Tests and Twenty20 matches before their Ashes winter.

Flower has seen England Test captain Andrew Strauss take a break and sit out the Twenty20 matches, but he will return for the Bangladesh Tests, while the likes of Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood and Graeme Swann have all played pretty much non-stop over the last 12 months.

England's cricket odds suggest they should make short work of Bangladesh, and it could be that some fresh faces are brought in for those games.

The coach claims it could be hard to fit "strength and conditioning" training into an already busy schedule, so he may consider rotating his squad and giving some players a bit of a rest.

"We have a very busy 12 months ahead of us and we are going to have to rest players at various times," said Flower.

"In certain situations it is possible that we will have to rest some players either for emotional reasons such as stress and sometimes it will be for strength and conditioning reasons."

Flower has also moved to stop England players getting too carried away about their Twenty20 triumph by warning that the national team is about all forms of cricket and there is still "huge scope for improvement" in some areas of their game.

Meanwhile, the England football team's World Cup 2010 betting odds makes them third favourites for this year's tournament.

They will be looking to emulate their cricket counterpart's trophy winning efforts when they travel to South Africa next month.