Tim Nielsen, the Australia coach, believes that England’s plans to bounce out Phillip Hughes during the Ashes series could come unstuck if they are not delivered with precision.

Hughes, the unorthodox left-hander, was twice dismissed by short-pitched balls by Stephen Harmison in the Australians’ final warm-up game against England Lions at Worcester. More of the same is sure to follow from Stuart Broad and Andrew Flintoff, in particular, when the first npower Test begins at the SWALEC Stadium, in Cardiff, on Wednesday.

But Nielsen warned that such a strategy could inadvertently play to Hughes’s strengths on the off side. “You have to be pretty precise if you are going to bowl that length to him,” Nielsen said. “We have seen how hard Phil hits through point if the ball is not quite right.”

In the three Test matches that Hughes has played so far, he was a thorn in the side of South Africa’s vaunted pace attack, scoring two hundreds in his second Test.

“South Africa bowled short to him in the winter,” Nielsen said. “Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Makhaya Ntini all went hard at him and he had great success.”

Apart from the effect on Hughes, Nielsen believes that a sustained short-pitched assault would take a physical toll on England’s pace attack. “It is physically taxing for the bowler to be smashing the ball into the middle of the wicket all the time,” Nielsen said. “To bowl like that for long periods is hard work and before you know it Phil could be on 40 and the pressure would be off.”

If the home side opt to play two spinners and three seam bowlers, much of the responsibility for a barrage of bouncers will fall to Broad and Flintoff, the taller bowlers. Given his history of injuries, England will not want to overwork Flintoff in the hope that he lasts the five-match series.

Broad showed his ability to bounce out a top-class batsman in the recent series against West Indies, when he dismissed Ramnaresh Sarwan with a burst of well-directed short-pitched bowling.

Over the next two days, Hughes will be working in the nets at Cardiff to rectify the weaknesses exposed by Harmison. In the first innings at Worcester, the left-hander failed to evade a short-pitched ball from over the wicket, then a bouncer from over the wicket penned him into a corner in the second innings. Both times, the ball lobbed up off his gloves to present simple catches to the slip cordon.

“He has two or three days to think about how he is going to cope with that approach and practise against it,” Nielsen said. “It has given him a real chance to be aware how England will attack him. It was a great experience for Phil \ because he hasn’t faced that quality of fast bowling for the last couple of months.”