Flower is keeping pace trio guessing for Perth

Broad's participation in the remainder of the tour was ended by an abdominal injury suffered on the fourth day of the innings and 71-run win in Adelaide.

That wide-margin success sent England into a 1-0 lead in the

series and into good spirits heading into their three-day tour game against Victoria in Melbourne tomorrow.

With Broad sidelined the match had been touted as a potential 'bowl-off' between Chris Tremlett and Yorkshire duo Ajmal Shahzad and Tim Bresnan.

But Flower's assertion that he knows his as yet unidentified

replacement for Broad will diminish that talk.

Tremlett serves as the most likely to get the nod if Flower opts to make a like-for-like replacement, and utilise the 6ft 7ins Surrey seam bowler's height on the fast-paced WACA Ground pitch.

There are also arguable cases for the Yorkshire pair, however, with Shahzad the most likely to be favoured by the famed 'Fremantle Doctor' breeze that blows in the afternoon at Perth, and county colleague Bresnan impressed during the tour of Bangladesh earlier this year.

"I have a fairly clear idea of who we want to play at Perth but we will get 270 overs of viewing our potential replacement," said Flower. "It would be remiss of me to talk about that now. If someone puts his hand up in Melbourne and forces his way in, then good on him.

"We weren't totally naive in thinking we'd get through the whole Test series without injuries to any of our quicks.

"We thought it was a priority to get some of our back-up quicks into good nick."

That happened when England sent Broad, Steven Finn, Anderson and off-spinner Graeme Swann to Brisbane to acclimatise early for the first Test last month – while others shared the bowling duties in the tour game against Australia A in Tasmania.

Tremlett took the honours statistically there, but all three fared encouragingly.

"They had a good run-out in Hobart; they'll get another one here against the Vics – and you've got to factor these things in," added Flower.

The coach is set to rest his first-choice attack for the tour game at the MCG.

He would be unable to call on James Anderson in any case with the right-armer due back in

England to attend the birth of his second child.

The 28-year-old is the latest of several England players to have temporarily left an overseas tour in similar circumstances – following the examples set previously by Andrew Strauss, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen among others.

But none has previously undertaken such a long trip, and while it is convenient that England have a mid-tour break between Tests, Flower expects Anderson will suffer from some jet-lag on his return to Perth.

"It is not ideal, not perfect. But we try to get the balance right between our commitments to England and our responsibility to the individual and family," he added.

"His wife and kids come ahead of this, but we try to get the balance right. It's not great that he'll have to be on a plane all the time.

"He'll have a bit of jet-lag, but that's what we're dealing with."

For now, Flower is concerning himself with the game against the Bushrangers as his side aim to maintain their unbeaten record on tour.

Flower is set to rest two batsmen for the game with Eoin Morgan to play his first match on tour while Steven Davies will take over as wicketkeeper with Matt Prior to play as a batsman.

"We have this policy of naming the side at the toss, we want to get cricket into Morgan and Davies," he said.

"This is a first-class game, our guys are representing England and we want to win it.

"We will have the same attitude to this game as the first three first-class games on tour."

Flower also dismissed as "crazy" the notion that the tourists could succumb to misplaced self-satisfaction, just because they happen to have won a Test match in Australia.

Asked whether there is a danger of England becoming too happy for their own good with their early Ashes lead, Flower said: "Not at all. How can we be complacent when we're ranked No 4 in the world? We've got a long way to go, and we're only 1-0 up in a five-Test series. So that would be a crazy way to think."

While England can contemplate just one injury-enforced change for the next Test, wholesale alterations are being mooted for Australia's squad.

There have even been fanciful calls in the media for the return from retirement, at the age of 41, of master leg-spinner Shane Warne.

One group of Queensland businessmen have reportedly called for a million-dollar kitty fund to tempt Warne back.

Flower's response, though, was predictably insouciant. "I've heard about some of the figures he earns – they might need to get some more contributions together there," he suggested.

England (probable): AJ Strauss (capt), IR Bell, IJL Trott, EJG Morgan, MJ Prior, PD Collingwood, SM Davies (wkt), TT Bresnan, A Shahzad, CT Tremlett, MS Panesar.