England coach Duncan Fletcher has repeated his plea for the amount of county cricket to be reduced if England are ever to challenge Australia for the Ashes.

Fletcher has long backed a reduction in the number of fixtures during a county season to allow players more time to work on their basic skills. It follows the admission by captain Nasser Hussain after Australia's eighth successive Ashes triumph, that county cricket will never provide adequate preparation against a formidable line-up like the current Australians.

"There's enough talent in county cricket to take England forward, but the one area I would look at is the amount of cricket being played," said Fletcher.

"There is too much cricket being played and people should be able to practice and sort out their technique, but they have to be given the opportunity to look at that technique like they do here in the southern hemisphere.

"In the state games here in Australia they have more time to look at technique and practice and prepare for the next game. This is something I mentioned in 1997 when I was with Glamorgan and it's been interesting chatting to a few of the Australian coaches that are over in England because I think almost every one of them agrees with me."

Fletcher admitted that the pressure of meeting Australia has simply been too much for England, despite their progress against other teams over the past two years.

"You can't hide from the fact that it was important we came out here to see how far we have improved," he said. "We've made some progress over the last couple of years and losing the first three Test matches has knocked us a little bit.

"They are a good experienced side and they've played well against other Test countries as well, but to some degree we didn't play as well as we could have and it's difficult to pinpoint why that is, but we didn't bat well under pressure.

"The only way you find players who can handle pressure is expose them to that sort of intensity and that sort of bowler coming at you on a regular basis, but it's a bit of a catch 22 situation - if you're going to improve your game you have to play at a higher level to do that.

But if they do play more at that level they will learn more how to handle it. It's difficult to reproduce that but the guys have to learn and have the character to go in there and handle it."

Meanwhile injured fast bowler Alex Tudor is back with the squad after spending a night in hospital recovering from being hit by a Brett Lee bouncer.

"When the ball first hit me I panicked big time and straight away put the glove to my head and saw a lot of blood, but luckily I had Alec Stewart at the other end and Darren Lehmann at short leg and they calmed me down a little bit," Tudor admitted.

"My first reaction was to knock my helmet off and put my hand to my face to see what had happened. I was a bit worried because as a kid I got hit near my left eye and needed three stitches and I was panicking that something serious could have happened to my eye and I just thank God that everything was OK."

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