2 minute read
“I hear you’re England’s spin bowler now, Joe. How did you get interested in that sort of thing?” Do we all have to be England’s spin bowler now? What’s the official line?“
England’s perfunctory ‘tour match’ against the England Lions is underway and everything is becoming clearer, in terms of team selection.
Ollie Pope seems to have been regarded as “the same kind of number three” as Ollie Pope and there also seems to be a plan to pack the bowling attack with right-arm seam bowlers, as historically that has always worked brilliantly in Australia.
On England’s first day against England Lions, the England bowling attack consisted of Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Ben Stokes, Mark Wood and Josh Tongue. Shoaib Bashir almost cleared the Lions XIII.
It’s a shame that when we were thinking about England’s Ashes bowling attack as first choice a few months ago, we didn’t really consider the possibility. We assumed that Bashir would play in a team led by Stokes, but would make way for Will Jacks and a fast bowler when Stokes suffers his next injury.
When it comes to right-arm seam bowlers, we have apparently sided with Tony Hayers’ view that there are too many of them, while England lean more towards Alan Partridge’s perspective: People like them. Let’s take a few more.
But what does this mean for spin? In both red and white ball cricket, England have shown a desire for a composite spin bowler. Without Stokes, they would have added Will Jacks as half-spinner and made up the rest with Joe Root, Jacob Bethell or both.
But this warm-up match version of the England XI has no Jacks. Or Bethel. That means Root will be the lone spinner.
In keeping with the team’s recent history of muddling through without the right spinner, this has been absolutely bloody and gruesome so far. Root conceded 117 runs in just 14 overs and the only wicket he took was Matt Fisher.
We look forward to this being put forward as solid evidence of the futility of spin in Australia.
Our first Test player of the match prediction: Nathan Lyon.
Follow the Ashes with King Cricket: get the email.
Visit previous Ashes with us: buy our book.
As we always say, the logistics of book retailing are just an absolute mystery to us. This is the state of affairs at the time of writing:
- Bookstore.org – says it usually ships within three weeks, but someone told us yesterday that it did indeed arrive within a few days
- Amazon – back in stock with reasonable delivery times
- TGJONES/WHSMITH – still out of stock
- Great books – in stock, only a few weeks delivery time
- Blackwells – in stock, but delivery times reduced to “usually shipped within 2-3 weeks”
- Beehive – out of stock
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