England’s women get their tour of the West Indies underway tomorrow as holders of the World Cup, the World Twenty20 and the Ashes.

It is a position of strength that has allowed them to arrive in St. Kitts without two of their best players – Wisden Cricketer of the Year Claire Taylor, who has stayed at home to work on her career as a management consultant at Reading University, and Sarah Taylor, who is being rested and will undergo “a focused period of physical regeneration and conditioning over the next two months”.

Such are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the respective sides England should still win comfortably without the Taylors, but it is an experiment that will be monitored by the ECB management as the men play in South Africa.

Complaints about the non-stop nature of the international schedule are very much in-vogue at the moment. It meant England were forced to give James Anderson and Paul Collingwood time off during the recent ODI series against Australia ahead of the Champions Trophy, and there has been considerable noise from the ECB suggesting that Andrew Strauss and other senior players will be rested from their tour of Bangladesh in February.

Strauss himself, while not speaking conclusively either way, would appear to welcome such a move. Yet by refusing to officially clarify before the squad left for South Africa their intentions to give Strauss a break, the ECB have left the England captain at the mercy of his team’s performance.

For, if England are hammered in South Africa will the ECB prioritise the long-term freshness of their captain over potential embarrassment in Bangladesh?