Nottinghamshire's new signing Ashwell Prince has back fellow Outlaw Darren Pattinson to stake a claim for an England recall.
England recall depends on good performance against South Africa
Nottinghamshire's new signing Ashwell Prince has back fellow Outlaw Darren Pattinson to stake a claim for an England recall with a good performance against South Africa on Saturday.
South Africa arrive in Derby for their second one-day match at Derby against England Lions, with Pattinson lining up for the national second string.
And the 31-year-old Prince expects Pattinson to prove his doubters wrong after attracting widespread criticism following his selection for the second Test at Headingley.
"I think he's an international class bowler," said Prince, who was Pattinson's second Test victim.
"At Headingley he bowled quite well and didn't let himself down at all.
"Perhaps there were a few nerves on day one-as you might expect from a man making his Test debut - but on day two he was probably England's best bowler."
Defeat
Prince admits that the 29-year-old had not deserved to be singled out as a scapegoat for the Test defeat.
He said: "We didn't really know anything about Pattinson but we made a few phone calls to some of our contacts on the county circuit and got some information from them pretty quickly.
"When it came to our first innings we all studied him closely to find out what his bowling was like.
"He didn't ask to be selected and every player wants to represent their country - he was hardly going to turn them down."
The one-day game will be South Africa's last before they play five one-day internationals with England and a Twenty20 international game.
The tourists are only two points behind Australia in the world rankings and will go into the series as favourites.
"It's the goal of the team to be number one in the world in both forms of the game. I think it's going to be a close series," Prince said.
