Coach Duncan Fletcher Photo CricInfo

England coach Duncan Fletcher has dismissed remarks made by Sunil Gavaskar about England's performance on the recent tour of India.

The Indian batting legend labelled the England side as "the champion whingers of the world." Writing in an Indian newspaper, Gavaskar criticised England for complaining about inadequate training facilities, as well as mentioning the standard of umpiring. Before Christmas, Gavaskar blamed England for making the Test series boring because of the strategy of bowling Ashley Giles left-arm spin over the wicket into the rough in an attempt to restrict Sachin Tendulkar's stroke play.

Until now, Fletcher has ignored Gavaskar's criticisms, at least in public. However, after the first training session of the New Zealand leg of the tour at the Westpak Trust Stadium in Hamilton, the England coach spoke out about the comments.

"It's very important to realise that he's on the ICC panel and should have an unbiased opinion and secondly its very sad when a good wine goes sour."

However, Fletcher's primary concern now is to prepare his squad for the first match of the tour in New Zealand against Northern Districts XI. This was the one practice session before a busy schedule of matches.

The squad left Mumbai just hours after levelling the series with India at 3 – 3 with the thrilling two run victory in the final game. There were stops in Hong Kong and Auckland on their way to Hamilton.

Fletcher said: "It can be quite a problem switching to an environment like this and I think the players are going to have to put quite an effort into getting switched on here. We don't know at the moment whether that's down to jet-lag or not. As soon as that last game was finished we travelled right through the night and the players could be tired.

"It's more difficult to adjust than people realise - it's totally different coming from India to here and I have a feeling this game might have come a little too early."

The only fitness worries for England centre on Ben Hollioake, the Surrey all-rounder who missed the last two matches in India with a knee problem, and fast bowler Matthew Hoggard, who was sent for blood tests after fainting on a flight from Kanpur to Delhi. However, physiotherapist Dean Conway is not ruling Hoggard out of consideration for the Northern Districts match.

All-rounder Craig White was not expected to join the party until the arrival in New Zealand after having keyhole surgery on his knee. In fact he recovered quicker than expected and rejoined the squad in India. Having not played there, however, he is expected to be included in Hamilton.

It is possible that White might be used to give impetus to the early middle order where there have been tendencies for England to be one-paced. They are expected to be given a good workout by a strong ND XI that includes five players with Test experience – Matthew Hart, Hamish Marshall, Simon Doull, Daryl Tuffey and Grant Bradburn.

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