For some time England have had the bowling resources, if properly marshalled, to avenge their horrendous trouncing in Australia last winter when those baggy green caps return in a little more than a year. The task beneath the surface of the primary duty awaiting Michael Vaughan's young team in Napier this Easter weekend is to sort out the batting and the fielding.

If they can, they might do more than win the third Test and the series against opponents who demand respect, as Vaughan rightly said after the 126-run win in the second Test in Wellington had been completed half an hour before lunch on Monday. They might begin to lay the base for beating Australia again.

That assumes, perhaps, that Australia will be more seriously disadvantaged by the coming of the Indian Twenty20 leagues, with all their capacity for confusing a team or an individual's priorities, not to mention sowing seeds of greed and envy that can blur the focus of professional sportsmen.

Repeating the dream of 2005 four years on would probably depend, too, on Andrew Flintoff, who, more than anyone, must crave revenge for the humiliation of emulating Johnny Douglas by losing all five Tests as captain in Australia in the series that followed.

Flintoff and Vaughan have not always seen eye to eye, but the present captain must know that the rediscovery of his match-winning qualities as an all-rounder would be priceless. The next few weeks, on tour with Lancashire now and starting in England for the MCC side against Sussex, the county champions, at Lord's from April 10, will begin to tell us how realistic a hope that is.

Consider the potential of this team if he does, however. By becoming again one of four fast bowlers in the attack, he would provide, with the Wellington trio of Ryan Sidebottom, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, potentially as good a unit as the Flintoff/Harmison/Hoggard/Jones combination that brought home the bacon in 2005. If Monty Panesar continues to improve, the spin will be sharper than it was from Ashley Giles.

But what of the batting and fielding? Somehow England have to get the slip catching as brilliant as it was in Hamilton more often than not. For my money, Paul Collingwood, a brilliant fielder in the cover/backward point/mid-wicket region and a good one at slip to slow bowlers, should no longer field finer than gully to the fast bowlers. Flintoff's reintroduction at second slip would help tremendously, while Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen have shown in the first two Tests in New Zealand what fine slip catchers they can be and should gradually become.

Pietersen, despite some notorious aberrations, has calmed down since his first Test series and is a high-class, highly mobile fielder anywhere, so the ideal would be for Andrew Strauss to justify his recall as a batsman and thereby to hold on to his place at first slip, where he is very good. At least Peter Moores, the head coach, has been wise enough to appreciate that having Ian Bell at slip and Cook at forward short leg in Sri Lanka made no sense. The swapping of the two has sharpened England in the field.

Another significant improvement has come from the decision by David Graveney's last selection committee to banish Matt Prior to county cricket until he can prove himself either a Test-class wicketkeeper or - it is not beyond him - a specialist batsman capable of playing in the top six. It is too early to judge the all-round package offered by Tim Ambrose, his successor, but becoming man of the match in his second Test was impressive.

Despite a couple of lapses on the fourth day in Wellington, his wicketkeeping has been top-class and he has missed fewer chances than Brendon McCullum, his highly rated counterpart for New Zealand. The challenge for Ambrose will be to find ways of making regular runs at No7, even when opponents work out where best to bowl to him. Already they will know that he is not to be given width outside his off stump.

The rapid improvement of Broad as a batsman will also be important to the balance of the team in the medium term. Against Australia and other strong teams, he will need to fulfil his batting potential as well as his bowling, to shorten what would otherwise be too long a tail with Flintoff back at No6.

Which of the batsmen would make way for a fit Flintoff - although initially it might have to be Broad who allows him back in until he has developed farther - may depend to some extent on what happens this weekend in the third Test in Napier. Strauss is not certain to keep his place ahead of Owais Shah, although Shah and the management have missed a trick by failing to get him a bat in a match while the second Test was being played. Even a club game would have helped him to keep his hand in.

Instead, in the unlikely event of Shah being preferred to Strauss, he would not have batted in a match since February 26. Throughout the Duncan Fletcher era, England failed to keep their reserve players sharp by getting them games on tour when they were out of the main side. Anderson's match for Auckland undoubtedly led directly to his success in the second Test.

Six of the best?

1 Number of centuries by England’s top six batsmen in five Tests against Sri Lanka and New Zealand this winter. Alastair Cook scored 118 in the third Test in Sri Lanka

10 Number of centuries by England’s top six in seven Tests against West Indies and India last summer. Kevin Pietersen made three, once going on to a double century, Michael Vaughan, Cook and Paul Collingwood two each and Ian Bell one

14 Number of Tests since Andrew Strauss scored a century. Bell has not made one in his past 11 Tests

55 Test centuries scored by England’s top six. Vaughan has 17, Pietersen and Strauss ten, Cook seven, Bell six and Collingwood five

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