Colne’s Steven Burke will join Chorley’s Sir Bradley Wiggins in going for gold at the Commonwealth Games tonight.

The pair will be part of England’s team pursuit squad which takes on favourites Australia in the gold medal race at 5.36pm.

The East Lancashire pair joined Andy Tennant and Steven Burke to qualify second fastest at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome turning in a time of three minutes 59.249 seconds that looked well within their comfort zone.

That was still enough to send New Zealand and Canada into a battle for bronze, but the Australian quartet of Jack Bobridge, Luke Davison, Alex Edmondson and Glenn O’Shea flexed their muscles by bettering England’s mark by over a second as they clocked 3mins 57.939secs.

Australia went last, and gave the look of front-runners, but it will all be up for grabs when the reigning Commonwealth gold medallists take on an England side featuring two of the current Olympic champions at the event in Clancy and Burke.

Wiggins, riding the team pursuit for only the second time in six years, looked particularly strong along with Clancy and will be eager to pocket gold having been controversially overlooked for this year’s Tour de France by Team Sky.