Prior handed an apology by Graveney after public axe

Matt Prior, as exclusively revealed in later editions of yesterday's Sportsmail, was the highest profile casualty of England's calamity in Sri Lanka and was left out of the Test and one-day squads for the tour to New Zealand. But there will be others axed unless England quickly arrest their worrying decline.

David Graveney, in his last act as chairman of selectors, confirmed England have picked two wicketkeepers untried at Test level in Tim Ambrose and Phil Mustard and told Prior, when he eventually contacted him on holiday in America yesterday, that he must work on the flaws in his keeping if he is to feature again.

But it was in his message to the players who will contest three Tests in New Zealand — after the one-day party have played two Twenty20 and five 50-over internationals — that Graveney was most emphatic.

"We have to be very clear," said Graveney. "This is the time for the senior men to deliver. We haven't got enough hundreds and we need to be bowling people out. We haven't made major alterations to the squad but we need to get out of the losing habit and be more ruthless. We go to New Zealand having lost our last two Test series and we need to improve."

To that end, England have returned to the experience and character of Andrew Strauss at the expense of Ravi Bopara and will consider batting him at No 3 so as not to disrupt the opening partnership of Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook.

That would leave Ian Bell, the man who seems to have everything in his batting locker except the capacity to move on to big hundreds, facing a return to the role of No 6 where he thrived last summer.

Bopara is retained for the one-day leg of the trip and Graveney revealed the Essex man batted in the final Test against Sri Lanka at Galle, in which he registered a pair, with a broken finger as a mitigating factor in his disappointing form in Sri Lanka after a promising start. The gifted 22-year-old will surely return.

Whether Prior will come back is a moot point. The seemingly endless saga of finding a capable keeper/batsman took another twist when Prior, perhaps harshly, was dispatched back to Sussex to be replaced by his former rival at Hove.

The Australian-born Ambrose, who left Sussex for Warwickshire two years ago when Prior won their battle to be the main gloveman, will start as the Test keeper while Mustard will open the batting and keep wicket in limited-overs cricket.

The surprise is that the Durham man will stay on as cover for the Tests even though his credentials as a keeper and batsman at the highest level are questionable.

Ambrose, too, has much to prove. He has only scored four first-class tons in the seven years since he arrived from New South Wales as a 17-year-old son of an English mother. Prior, by comparison, has scored 15 first-class hundreds while Chris Read — remember him? — has 11.

The most unlucky player to miss out, as Graveney conceded, was James Foster who will get his chance next summer if Ambrose fails. The only other contentious selection saw Monty Panesar left out of the one-day squad in favour of Kent's James Tredwell. Panesar was told to work on his bowling with the Lions in India, ready for New Zealand.

TOUR DATES — Feb 1-2: Tour match v Canterbury (Christchurch); Feb 5: 1st Twenty20 (Auckland); Feb 7: 2nd Twenty20 (Christchurch); Feb 9: 1st ODI (Wellington); Feb 12: 2nd ODI (Hamilton); Feb 15: 3rd ODI (Auckland); Feb 19: 4th ODI (Napier); Feb 23: 5th ODI (Christchurch); Feb 24-25: Tour match v Otago (Dunedin); Feb 27-Feb 29: Tour match v Otago (Dunedin); Mar 4-8: 1st Test (Hamilton); Mar 12-16: 2nd Test (Wellington); Mar 21-25: 3rd Test (Napier).

Test squad: Vaughan (capt), Cook, Strauss, Pietersen, Collingwood, Bell, Shah, Ambrose (wkt), Mustard (wkt), Swann, Broad, Sidebottom, Harmison, Hoggard, Anderson, Panesar.

One-Day squad: Collingwood (capt), Cook, Mustard, Bell, Pietersen, Shah, Bopara, Ambrose, Wright, Swann, Mascarenhas, Tredwell, Broad, Tremlett, Sidebottom, Anderson.