Wounded England wait to make call on XI

England are sweating on Jason Roy's fitness ahead of their World Cup clash against India at Edgbaston on Sunday and will make a final call over the weekend.

Back-to-back defeats against Sri Lanka and Australia have left the pre-tournament favourites England in danger of missing out on a semi-final spot.

With questions now being raised about England's ability to chase down totals on difficult batting tracks, they are hoping that in-form batsman Roy regains full fitness soon as his replacement James Vince has failed to impress.

Roy has passed 50 in five of his past six one day internationals and recorded the second-highest score of the World Cup to date with his 153 against Bangladesh, while Vince has scored 26, 14 and 0 in his three innings.

"Jason is making good progress from his hamstring injury. He is being assessed every day," an England and Wales Cricket Board spokesman said on Wednesday.

"Yesterday he batted in the nets and was running shuttles on the outfield. A decision on whether he'll be fit will be made when we train on Friday and Saturday."

England have no other frontline batsmen in their squad to call on, with fast-bowling allrounder Tom Curran, paceman Liam Plunkett and spinner Liam Dawson joining Roy on the sidelines at Lord’s on Tuesday.

Vince was included in the initial squad as a replacement for Alex Hales, who was stood down for disciplinary reasons just weeks before the tournament began.

Speaking 10 days ago after Roy’s injury first came to light, skipper Eoin Morgan conceded a recall for Hales would be complicated given senior players had backed the decision to exclude him from the squad after he failed a drug test.

"We have not considered replacing any players yet," Morgan told the BBC. "But If Ed Smith, the national selector, came to myself and Trevor Bayliss, the coach, and said he felt that Alex was the best option, we would have to assess how that would sit in the changing room and the stigma it would bring with Alex coming back.”

Roy is not the only fitness concern for England, with bowlers Adil Rashid and Jofra Archer also managing niggles.

Rashid has soreness to his right shoulder but is expected to be play on Sunday, while the England camp continues to monitor Archer's condition.

"Archer has tightness to his left side and will continue to be assessed ahead of the India match," the spokesman added.

Star batsman Joe Root expects emotions to run high at Edgbaston on Sunday, with swathes of fans from Birmingham's big British Asian community to be backing India, heaping the pressure on the home side.

"I personally think we have to be very calm about how we approach the next couple of games because the games themselves might get quite emotional, especially with the atmosphere at Edgbaston," said Test captain Root.

"We believe we're still more than capable of qualifying for the semi-finals and when that happens, it doesn't really matter how you got there because that's when the tournament really starts to kick in.

"We'll see these two games as quarter-finals if you like, which in a way when it comes round to the knockout stage should serve you well.

"You're going to have to win big games at some stage in the tournament if you're going to go on and win it, so it may be that ours have come just a little bit sooner than we anticipated."

Rashid was pragmatic over the prospect of a hostile crowd, at the same ground where his close friend Moeen Ali was booed during an India game in 2014.

"People will enjoy themselves, have some fun and banter," he said. "We will not be fazed by that.

"It is disappointing sometimes, but it happened. The crowd get involved but it does not bother us. We played India last summer at Edgbaston and we enjoyed it and did our job."