England saw signs of improvement through the first day of the Second Ashes Test in Adelaide, taking five wickets before the hosts closed on 273-5.

It could have been better, though, were it not for a succession of dropped catches in the field. Graeme Swann was quick to state that no fingers were being pointed in the dressing room.

"Nobody's going to be hard on anyone else,” he said.

"We know how hard we all work on our fielding, and we'll come back tomorrow and hopefully take those half-chances.

"If we can keep them below 350, we'll be happy."

Michael Carberry’s drop to give Brad Haddin a second chance was a glaring one, while Joe Root and Panesar himself were both guilty of putting down half chances. 

"Obviously he's disappointed," said Swann.

"Carbs has taken some unbelievable catches on this trip so no-one's having a go at him at all. It's just one of those things. Sometimes they don't stick."

Panesar was named in the side at the expense of Chris Tremlett, while Durham all-rounder Ben Stokes has been brought in to replace the ill Jonathan Trott.

"Monty's Monty," Swann said.

"He's always been left-field and a bit different to everyone else and it's one of the reasons why we love him so much.

"We don't care what's happened in the last 12 months off the field. He's one of the boys and we embrace him as ever and we love seeing him do well."

England’s difficulty in holding catches didn’t stretch as far as Swann, who held onto a beauty to dismiss George Bailey after another short delivery from Broad. 

"We're fairly pleased. We missed a couple of chances that on another day we'd expect to take. But we stuck to our guns fairly well.

"We're disappointed, but not angry. That's cricket. You do drop catches. There's always a sense of frustration when they go down but we've taken some great catches on this trip and we're certainly not pointing fingers."

England will resume tonight knowing that they can retain control of the match with early wickets in the second day, and Swann was sure that this was a very different prospect to the first Test.

"There's no pace in the deck whatsoever," he said.

"There's a little bit of turn. It's drier than we'd normally expect in Adelaide. It was slow and very easy to bat on if they were willing to play straight. 

"We've got to try to come back and get the ball talking early on [on Friday]. It got a bit of reverse swing today, which was encouraging. 

"If we can do that again and then a bit of spin from me and Monty, and hopefully go through them cheaply.

"You never know what par is until both teams have batted. We thought 500 was par last week and we only got 120!"