Last chance for Bell and Bopara in Sri Lanka

Ian Bell and Ravi Bopara face different challenges but the stakes are the same. Bell has to prove he can cope with people questioning his place in the side and score runs to stay there. If Bopara is picked, and I believe he should despite his side strain, then he will be given his last crack at carving out a Test career. This will be his third chance in the Test team. Players do not get a fourth opportunity these days. It is three strikes and you are out. Bell's form has dropped dramatically since his brilliant summer last year. He is quite an insecure person. He turns 30 next month but he is quite young for his age and he still does not send out the message that he is absolutely comfortable wearing the England shirt. When he has a couple of low scores the demons start spreading doubt in his mind. It should not happen because he is a player with such a good record. He should be confident, controlled and forget about those low scores because he is talented enough to turn it around. His challenge is facing up to the mental pressure of aspects of the media questioning his place. We are a long way off him losing his spot but he knows the only way to answer those questions is to score runs and look after the end column. It sounds simple and generally when you play well as a batsman you do the simple things well. But it is a long time since he has been in this situation. He can be fragile and England have to be careful how they handle him over the next couple of weeks. He needs a bit of comforting. He is the kind of person who needs an arm around the shoulder and told how good he is. You need to tell him: "You are in the side, just go out and play." Against orthodox spin he is fine but when he faces a "mystery" spinner he struggles. He is a small man which means he does not make a massive stride forward and plays from the crease. The result is he does not smother the spin, which is crucial if you cannot read which way the ball is turning. Against Pakistan he never looked threatened by an orthodox spinner such as Abdul Rehman, it was Saeed Ajmal who made him nervous. That is encouraging because Sri Lanka do not have a high-quality mystery spinner in this post-Muralitharan era. Against the likes of Rangana Herath, Sri Lanka's slow left-armer, he will be fine because he knows the ball is only turning one way. It is about whether he can cope with the mental pressure of people questioning his place. A batsman had to pay the price for the failures in the UAE and Eoin Morgan was the fall guy. It opens the door for Bopara and he deserves another chance even if his injury will prevent him from bowling. England should not worry about that. They picked four bowlers in the UAE and it worked. The fact they lost had nothing to do with the bowlers. Bopara has been waiting patiently and Samit Patel is not ready to jump ahead of him. Bopara deserves a run six or seven Tests to prove his worth. That is what Morgan was granted. He has had chances before. On my tour to Sri Lanka in 2007 he made his Test debut in Kandy and then lost his place after three ducks. We then had his failed attempt to bat at three in the 2009 Ashes. Cats get nine lives but batsmen only three so this is a big one for Ravi. He has never really performed against strong international attacks and England will be looking ahead to further challenges this year. They will want him to prove he can do it against Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel this summer, or in India later in the year. Bopara is a decent player but he can be a bit vacant and dozy in the field. His mind probably wanders to his batting and you cannot do that these days. I want to see him energised and Morgan-like in the field: committed and on the ball. He needs to stay focussed and not look into the future. Runs will take care of that. Sri Lanka is a hard place to tour but these batters are lucky Murali is no longer around. The 3-0 defeat in the UAE caught us all by surprise but it was just down to the batting. England only had to score another 100 runs in every other innings and they would have won the series. Since then they have done everything possible to rectify it. In the one-day series against Pakistan I saw an improvement in the way they played. They got the balance spot on with the way they moved the ball into the gaps and had boundary options as well. That bodes well. Andrew Strauss has been around long enough to know his hundred in the last warm-up match will count for little when the first Test starts. I have seen lots of players score runs in warm-ups and fade in the Tests. Monday morning will have a different feel. It will have an edge about it as the nerves kick in and Andrew Strauss knows he needs a good, solid series. He does not necessarily have to smash the big hundred but what he definitely does not want is a low score in the first innings of the first Test. When you are a bit short of runs you just hope your name is not on a good ball. The first Test is a high-pressure match for England after the whitewash to Pakistan and it will be intriguing to see how they bounce back. In a strange way that defeat has probably made them more determined.