Wales have turned to experience against England at Twickenhamon Saturday as they try to head off a third consecutive defeat in a Six Nations campaign for the first time since 2007. Wayne Pivac has promised a tweak in tactics after an adventurous approach cost the champions soft tries against Ireland and France.

Liam Williams, who has not played since suffering an ankle injury in training before October’s World Cup semi-final against South Africa, takes the place of the injured Josh Adams on the wing, the prop Rob Evans makes his first start since the grand slam match against Ireland a year ago and the scrum-half Rhys Webb returns to the bench.

Williams will be joined there by the No 8 Taulupe Faletau, a starter in their three matches. He makes way for the fit-again Josh Navidi, whose ability at the breakdown will be needed against a side including Tom Curry. Wales’ starting line-up contains a total of 828 caps.

“England are a strong side, one of the leading ones in the world,” Pivac said.

The Wales coach added: “They are very comfortable, as they showed against New Zealand in Japan and against Ireland. They put away two of the top teams in the world comfortably and there is a healthy respect, but it is also a game we are looking forward to.

“The intensity has been there in training this week. You only have to listen to Alun Wyn Jones [the Wales captain]: it is there in his voice and he has led from the front in training. It has been no-holds barred in training. No one has been keeping anything back and that tells me there is a big performance coming.

“England have a very good record at Twickenham, one which tells us we will have to be at the peak of our powers to win.

“ We have reviewed the French game and we have to make sure that when we get opportunities we take them. We have made a few tweaks to our gameplan.”

Pivac said he did not regard the selection of Williams as a gamble, nor that of Navidi who has played three matches since the World Cup after pulling a hamstring.

“We gave Liam extra time in training rather than send him back to the Scarlets last week,” Pivac said. “We have put as much volume into him as we can and he is good to go. We thought he might have been back a bit earlier but we took precautions until we felt he had reached the level when he was fit to play.

“Josh is a tough character who puts pressure on the opposition and he is a fantastic player over the ball. One of his first caps was against New Zealand and he so impressed their coach, Steve Hansen, he asked who he was. We are confident both he and Liam will do a job for us.”

The fourth change Pivac made from the home defeat to France was at scrum-half where Tomos Williams, whose dropped pass on his line in Dublin cost Wales a try and him his place in the side, returns in place of Gareth Davies, Wales’s try scorer in their last victory at Twickenham in the 2015 World Cup.

“We have three scrum-halves of quality,” Pivac said. “If one of them is not quite 100% for any reason we do not need to put them out there. Gareth did not have his best performance against France and Tomos deserves a chance on that basis.”