One-day changes excite Fletcher

It gets more complicated when you look at all the scenarios and that's what makes it so exciting Duncan Fletcher Innovations to make debut Agnew on substitutes Replacements slated

Duncan Fletcher is looking forward to testing his tactical nous when his England side become guinea pigs for new innovations in one-day cricket.

The NatWest Challenge series between England and Australia begins on Thursday, and will see substitutes and new field restrictions introduced.

"Selection is going to be difficult, then once play gets going it's going to be very tricky," said the coach.

"One day cricket has become predictable. They had to make changes."

Teams will have the chance to bring on a 12th man to replace a bowler or batsmen any time during the match.

As regards the fielding tactics, there will be only 10 overs of restrictions at the beginning of the innings but the captain of the fielding side will have the option to introduce two five-over blocks of restrictions at any time during the innings.

"The main variable was constant with the first 15 overs of fielding restrictions and no thinking had to take place aside from the captain moving a few fielders around," added Fletcher.

"Now there are so many variables and then it becomes very complicated.

"It's going to be tricky and it's going to be some time before a pattern settles if it ever does settle."

Australia in England fixtures

Fletcher added that he has discussed how best to implement the new innovations with captain Michael Vaughan and the rest of the England set-up.

"We have got to take into consideration these new rules they are bringing into the game - it might have some effect, especially the 12th man thing," said Fletcher.

"There are a whole lot of scenarios about this. We have thrown it around in the changing room between myself and Michael Vaughan and the management team had a discussion the other day where we sat down and talked about it.

"It gets more and more complicated when you look at all the scenarios and that's what probably makes it so exciting - if there is going to be all these scenarios it will make the game a lot more interesting."