Selecting England’s Squad For South Africa

Although the ink in the Seddon Park scorebook is barely dry, England’s selectors will choose their squads for South Africa tomorrow. The games come thick and fast this winter, with the first Test commencing as soon as Boxing Day. This gives the players about 20 hours to digest their festive turkey, xmas pud, and schooners of Drambuie, before they’re back on the field in a high stakes Test.

So who will the selectors choose to pull off what used to be one of the toughest challenges in world cricket? It’s an interesting question. England took 14 players to New Zealand so we can probably expect Big Ed to name another 3 for South Africa. We took 17 players the last time we toured there (in 2016), and we’re playing the same number of Tests (4), so I doubt the numbers will change – although, after the debacle at Hamilton, the selectors might feel temped to pick ten extra keepers just in case.

The first thing we should do is ask whether any of the players who toured Middle Earth will be dropped. Personally I think this is unlikely, although with Jimmy Anderson and Mark Wood fit again, and Olly Stone also training alongside them, the existing group of seamers might have slightly squeaky bums. Jack Leach and Matt Parkinson will also be nervously awaiting news of the upcoming phone call between Joe Root and Moeen Ali, in which we expect the skipper to try and coax Mo back to Test cricket.

First let’s deal with the batsmen. I reckon there are four ‘dead certs’, two ‘almost certs’, and no what I’d call ‘possibles’.

Dead certs: Joe Root, Rory Burns, Joe Denly, and Ollie Pope.

Almost certs: Dom Sibley, Zak Crawley, Jonny Bairstow

Curiously I think the player most vulnerable is probably Crawley rather than Bairstow. The latter has a central contract and the selectors might argue that Denly can open in an emergency. This might not seem entirely logical to us, but I guess we’ll just have to ‘trust in the process’ – the cheesy term made famous by NBA trends guru Sam Hinkie, one of the analytics experts admired by Ed Smith.

Although Jonny might not have played any red ball cricket since he was dropped, there’s a growing expectation in the media that he’ll make the squad. It will be interesting to see how the selectors explain his recall if it happens. I’m sure there will be some data-led justification or, failing that, a reference to ‘gut feel’ / ‘form is temporary, class is permanent’ / ‘he’ll get angry if we ignore him’ etc.

Crawley’s place might also be complicated by the fact that both Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler are top 6 batting options. Indeed, England could field a pretty experienced top 6 whilst leaving out both Pope and Bairstow on the morning of a game. There’s plenty of batting depth available even if we take just six specialists.

And then there’s the Ben Foakes dilemma. Ed Smith might want an extra keeper in reserve just in case Buttler’s back flares up again but I think this is unlikely. After all, Ed Smith likes picking the Surrey gloveman about as much as I like watching David Warner score triple hundreds on belting batting wickets.

What’s more, Ashley Giles and Co kept telling everyone until their red faces turned blue that Ollie Pope was indeed a wicket-keeper in New Zealand – really, honest guv. Selecting Foakes for South Africa would therefore make them look extremely disingenuous.

The makeup of the seam bowling stocks is the most complicated issue. Conditions in South Africa should suit bowlers who hit the pitch a bit harder; therefore there might be changes on a ‘horses-for-courses’ or, in the case of England’s attack, a ‘carthorses for courses’ basis. Our attack in New Zealand had the worst strike-rate of any England touring team in Test history.

The situation is made even more complicated by the returning Anderson, Wood, and Stone. Craig Overton was also called into a South Africa-based fast bowling camp monitored by Ed Smith. On reflection, Saqib Mahmood might have made more of an impression over there than carrying the drinks in New Zealand.

Overall, the TFT crystal ball is telling me to categorise the bowling options thus:

Dead certs: Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer

Almost certs: Sam Curran, Mark Wood

Possibles: Chris Woakes, Olly Stone, Saq Mahmood

Longshots: Craig Overton

Even though Chris Woakes bowled pretty well in New Zealand I’m not convinced that he’s a shoo-in for South Africa. His record over there is really poor – just 2 wickets in 4 innings at an average of 98.5 – and therefore Wood, Stone, and Mahmood might seem like more appealing options. However, with England’s top order batting about as reliable as a Robin Reliant, the Warwickshire stalwart’s ability with the willow might yet save him. It’s a similar story with Sam Curran although his left-arm angle gives him an advantage.

When it comes to the faster bowlers (Wood, Stone, and Mahmood) fitness will probably be the deal-breaker. Mark Wood was excellent in both the West Indies and the World Cup, and a potential partnership with Archer is a mouthwatering prospect. However, it’s extremely hard to see him coming through back-to-back test matches unscathed (the first and second, and then the third and fourth are very close together). England might only be able to play him in two of the games.

The selectors might also have similar concerns with Stone. When Ashley Giles was at Warwickshire he often spoke about minimising Stone’s workload. Having said that, there’s definitely a case for rotating them. Wood could play the first and third tests with Stone playing the second and fourth games. This plan might just be funky enough to appeal.

Where this leaves Mahmood is anyone’s guess. He’ll be very disappointed to be left out having gone to New Zealand but the returnees change everything. Personally I’d like to keep him in the squad as he offers something a bit different, but will there be room?

Finally there’s the spinners to consider. Much as the selectors and management seem to have it in for Jack Leach, I would be gobsmacked if he’s left out. It would seem ridiculously harsh. Consequently, it all comes down to Parkinson versus Moeen. Personally I’d retain the former, as Mo bowled dreadfully the last time we toured South Africa (10 wickets in the four Tests at an average of 48.5), but once again England might choose a bowler based on his ability to wield the willow – especially if Woakes doesn’t make the trip.

Overall, here’s the squad I expect them to pick:

Burns, Sibley, Denly, Root, Stokes, Pope, Bairstow, Buttler, Curran, Woakes, Mooen (if available), Leach, Broad, Anderson, Archer, Wood, Stone.

*The final choice will come down to Stone versus Crawley for the 17th spot. I think they’ll go for the extra bowler due to Ben Stokes’s ongoing knee issue. Parkinson will tour if Moeen rules himself out.

Tune in at the weekend to see how wide of the mark I was. Hint: probably very.

James Morgan

Written in collaboration with Odds USA

27 comments

  • Personally I find the very notion of a red-ball recall for Moeen Ali shocking – as a front-line spinner, which is the role he is being considered for I would have him behind not only Leach and Parkinson but also offspinners Bess and Virdi and (for all his inexperience) slow left-armer Liam Patterson-White. I agree with most of what you have said here – sadly I cannot see the selectors swallowing their pride re Foakes although they undoubtedly should. The good news is that SA are in such disarray that even a less than ideal England squad should be able to beat them.

  • No one else thinking that a Wood-Archer combo could be just what we need to have that psychological advantage from the off?

    With respect to Jimmy, Broad and Woakes, opposition batsmen are hardly cowering in fear when their names appear on the team sheet. It will be no different with this South African team.

    Remember how they had that friendly rivalry in the world cup against the speed gun? Imagine them both pounding in for short bursts of 95mph thunderbolts. Quick wickets.

    • If both are definitely fit I would certainly like to see that, with the third seamer role taken by either Broad or Anderson depending on fitness and Jack Leach and Ben Stokes rounding out the attack (I do not envisage any track in SA warranting the selection of two specialist spinners and would always want one).

      • I quite agree, which brings us back to Root’s captaincy, and his ability to manage his strike bowlers successfully over 5 days.

  • Just a thought: Harmison / Broad, Hoggard / Anderson, Jones / Wood, Flintoff/ Archer
    (oKk the last one is a bit of a reach.) As an opening bat I think i woould rather have faced the 2005 attack than this one.

    • Harmison / Hoggard / Flintoff / Jones worked so well as a combo because they complemented each other so well. There was someone for all conditions too. The only thing missing was a left-armer.

    • Harmy could bowl 90mph…
      Flintoff could bowl 90mph (oh and seam/swing it)
      Hoggy was a lesser anderson tbf
      Jones could bowl 90mph … oh and swing it !

      Broad is accurate but only effective on green tops now
      Flintoff vs archer.. really… archer has done what ?? Bowled 135kph for a series that’s what with no movement
      Jones vs wood… wood the guy who can’t move a ball off straight and has had what.. one good innings in red ball (couldn’t care less what he’s done in white ball)

      I think yet again we are seeing this England team massively over rated yet again

      The fact anyone thinks moeen or Bairstow deserve to play test cricket just proves how delusional people are.. or simply in denial

  • Shauno – I think that top class batsmen would probably rather face the erratic Wood/Archer combo than the 900 wickets Anderson/Broad. Tailenders however…

  • Will the series go ahead with the SA Board in meltdown? The players are going to struggle to come up with anything quite so entertaining as what their respective boards are managing. Colin Graves in the media today:

    “One of the first things I said as chairman was we want cricket back on terrestrial television. We have done it but Test cricket on terrestrial television is a totally different ball game,”

    Yes, the 16.66 is “a totally different ball game”. Nice of Graves to admit it!

    ““If you talk to broadcasters, none of them want [Test cricket]. It does not fit into their schedules. The cost to do a Test match is astronomical from a broadcasting point of view”.

    Isn’t the idea of “the crown jewels” that they have to show something regardless of if they want to or not?

    “If any government starts pushing free to air and says it has got to happen, they are going to take a chunk of money out of English cricket. That is not just professional cricket. It will take a chunk of money out of recreational cricket, women’s cricket, schools, the whole shooting match”.

    Interesting that Graves should say this a week before a general election. Funny as well the corporate media let pass unchallenged that “women” and “schools” will have to take the hit – not Tom Harrison’s £700k salary or the ECB’s ever-growing admin costs.

    “60-65 per cent [attendance] is what we are starting off with. If we get above that, which I’m pretty sure we can, it will be a success”.

    Not the most subtle of managing expectations there.

    “How can it be a risk when you have the money banked from the broadcasters for five years?”

    By this logic, the competition could have five years of deserted stadia and zero ratings and still be judged a success.

    “We gave it away to the rest of the world and did not do too much with it because again there were a lot of soothsayers out there calling it Mickey Mouse cricket. Look what has happened to T20. That is why we have done what we have done. We are not going to fall in the same trap twice.”

    There’s Graves telling you that the main reason behind the 16.66 is that they failed to copyright T20 and still some won’t believe it.

    “What [the World Test Championship] looks like in two or three years, I don’t know. I think some countries might fall off. It is down to the ICC to protect Test cricket”.

    This is profoundly ominous. Some countries dropping Test cricket in 2 or 3 years? Who’s our man at the ICC preventing this? It wouldn’t be that guy caught boasting to camera that he makes no apologies for putting his nation first?

    • “We gave it away to the rest of the world and did not do too much with it because again there were a lot of soothsayers out there calling it Mickey Mouse cricket. Look what has happened to T20. That is why we have done what we have done. We are not going to fall in the same trap twice.”

      There’s Graves telling you that the main reason behind the 16.66 is that they failed to copyright T20 and still some won’t believe it.

      BINGO!!!

      PS I should mention that I really wanted to write about the Graves interview today but with the squad being named tomorrow I thought it was more prudent to deal with selection first.

  • SA are utterly dire so anyone building this series up as anything great is delusional

  • I think whoever is selected in the seam bowling department there are so many fitness issues still likely to rear their heads that I can see 2 or 3 on standby.
    The problem with most of them is their batting. Stokes is the only consistent performer there with Woakes having been disappointing recently.
    You pick any combination of Anderson, Broad, Archer, Stone, Woakes or Wood and you’ve a long tail. This puts pressure on the top 6. If you add Leach to that the tail starts at 7. Then you’ve the panic problem of picking Butler to keep and Moin as spinner. With the top 3 still largely unproven, merely promising, that’s huge pressure on Root and Stokes.
    I still think we’ve a good chance to win out there but anything could happen with both sides in transition. It should be a more interesting series than New Zealand but would it have been better to lengthen that tour and not bother with this one, so the players had time to acclimatise better and give more meaningful performances. 3 tours out of season seems excessive to me and shows little concern for player welfare. It’s just becoming a production line organised by administrators who have no stake in its consequences.

  • Our test team is not that good. Sorry to say but I wouldn’t pick any of them. England are not as good as they think they are. Currently they are pretty mediocre. Let’s wait ten years and see who emerges. However, the ECB will have killed off the county championship by then.

  • Joffra Archer – not that good, pretty crap really. We need to resurrect Bob W. I feel. He is pretty ordinary. I don’t get what all the fuss us about. The same with Root – a bit like Cook. A good score now and then but most of the time pretty average. England are a pretty crap red ball proposition.

  • Root as a captain – are we joking. He is awful let’s face it. I am sick of all these TV pundits who are so close to the players that are scared to say what they really think. Bring back Bob W !

  • It’s going to be a series of two second class test teams isn’t it. Had Anderson played enough cricket? At 37 going on 38 he’s more likely to break down again. Time to go really. Will Stone and Wood stay fit for even one day 5 game? Looks like our top order batting problems have been taken over by bowling problems.

  • My team for the 1st test (not what I expect them to go for) Sibley, Burns, Denly, Root,Stokes,Pope,Foakes,Ali,Archer,Broad,Anderson.
    Also in squad Leach, Woakes, Wood/Stone, Bairstow, Curran, Crawley?

    Leaving Leach out of the team seems odd but the alternative is him or Archer batting 8 which also seems odd. If Ali is still out of test cricket, I’d go Leach at 8 with, oh, I don’t know Bess in as the extra spinner, or Parkinson although the little bit I’ve seen of him hasn’t been very good.
    AWTTK

  • A pretty feeble argument against Woakes. His SA record is entirely down to one test 4 years ago at Centurion where SA rattled up 475 and Jimmy Anderson was also battered all over the park. He has only ever played 2 tests there and bowled well in the other. It is the equivalent of me advocating Wood because of his ability on hard dry wickets – whilst ignoring the fact that his record in such conditions is vastly improved by trousering 6 cheap Windies wickets a year ago.

    • Whilst I agree that Wood is overrated as a test bowler, the issue with Woakes is that he also has a poor record in Australia (4 Tests) and India (3). The only place which doesn’t have broadly English-style conditions where he’s had success is Bangladesh, against the lowest-placed team in the top nine (maybe he trousered some cheap wickets!)

      And he’s not far off 31–he’s not a promising youngster. I would be surprised if he had a really successful tour of SA–although nothing would surprise me about SA’s cricket at the moment!–and I would be absolutely amazed if he was anything other than cannon-fodder in India next winter or Australia the one after.

      They would have been better having another look at Stone (if he’s really fit) and Mahmood than take Wood and Woakes.

  • So Moeen Ali can’t tour SL because he’s signed for the PSL at a cool £150,000 (much more than he’d earn for the tour as a non-centrally contracted player)? Bear in mind he’s been on a million quid a year for the past few years and he’s 32, not 35 or 36 and seeking a big final pay day at the tail-end of a career. The manager of his PSL team…. Andy Flower.

    I’d say this is another glimpse of the future, but it isn’t – it’s the here and now. The ECB might just want to be very obliging to the PCB because they’re one of the prime candidates to buy the 16.66.

  • I am getting a bit cheesed off about people saying that Ed Smith uses a ‘moneyball’ approach to selection (sophisticated data analysis aimed at achieving the best overall results for the least salary money); when in fact he does almost exactly the Opposite – picks the team *despite* conclusively adverse statistics – more like ‘bankruptball’ (the minimum level of barely-acceptable results for the biggest waste of resources).

    Moneyball pretty much depends on the fact that Major League Baseball has 162 matches per season, and even the best teams usually lose 1/3 of the games. Getting through to the post-season depends on average perfomance across the season, and individual games (and at-bats) count for next-to-nothing.

    Test cricket has a relatively tiny sample size of games per season – so each individual match has a much greater significance.

    But I believe that there is considerable scope for using stats better in selection – and I actually published a research paper about this a few years ago. I don’t think anybody noticed, except Scyld Berry (I sent him a copy) who said some nice things:

    https://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2006/11/bowling-equivalent-of-batting-average.html

    The exmaple of wicket keeping (which I didn’t publish) may be of more interest to you, since it tries to provide valid data to support the benefits of real wicket keepers over semi-competent batter-keepers:

    https://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2007/05/is-batsment-wicket-keeper-worth-more-to.html

    https://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2010/08/wicket-keeping-averages-again.html

    (This is not – however – relevant to Foakes versus Butler/ Bairstow – as ordinary batting averages already suggest that Foakes is a better test batter, regardless of his wicket keeping ability – the new analysis just adds to the already established statistical case for Foakes.)

    • No sane person doubts the case for Foakes (and that includes a couple of pros I have chatted to). There is a dreadful smell at the heart of Rngland selection for the keeping spot – and it has nothing to do with cricket.

      • Just another case of if the face fits in the clique-ridden world that is cricket selection. It often seems to depend on who you know, did you go the right schools, and do you buy into the ‘team culture’.
        It’s certainly the right season for Chico’s comment, ‘you can’t fool me, there ain’t no ‘Sanity Clause’.

  • South Africa does not even have selectors or an actual functional board in place now, more or less. The only good news coming from there is that the South African players associations have stated there won’t be strikes during the England tour.

    4-0 to England will flatter South Africa.

  • I’m pleased to see Bairstow, Anderson and Wood recalled although the two are not match ready I understand.
    And thankfully we see the return of a decent keeper.

    • Why Bairstow ?????

      Avgs what… 35 off about 50 tests.. dropped rightly and has done nothing to warrant selection.. why exactly is it good that he’s bene picked ?!?!

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

copywriter copywriting