England Tours Announced

Sri Lanka & India

Following the South Africa One Day International’s being called off, England have now announced tours to Sri Lanka and India.

First up is Sri Lanka where there will be two test matches in January.

India follows in February and March in a tour that will include Four test matches, five T20’s and three One Day Internationals.

The squad for Sri Lanka is yet to be announced but one thing we are almost certain of is that Jonny Bairstow is to be recalled to the test squad following his withdrawal from the Big Bash.

I also expect that he will be selected for the team and not just the squad. I just don’t think that they would take a player of his seniority as a squad player and ask him to pull out of the Big Bash if they weren’t going to play him.

So that begs the question as to where he will slot in to this batting line-up.

Buttler looks to have secured the wicketkeeper and number seven role after last summer so that means Bairstow is to come in solely as a batsman.

Root will bat 4 and Stokes will bat 5 so that leaves two options in my opinion.

One is that Bairstow will bat at 6 in place of Ollie Pope. Pope had a few bad scores in the summer but looks a class act and I think England can sense a big future for him and don’t really want to drop him again and shatter his confidence having already dropped him once when he first came in to the team.

Bairstow went back to Yorkshire and played a few games for Yorkshire batting at number 3. He has also done this for England previously and scored a century in that role.

This is where I think he will come in. Poor old Jonny, in and out of the team and up and down the order in every format but just gets on with it and very rarely lets England down.

Zak Crawley was England’s number 3 during the summer and scored a double ton batting there. Are they going to drop him? No, I think he will be moved up to open as he does in County Cricket meaning that one of Burns or Sibley will make way.

Sibley’s recent form is better than Burns but there is a feeling he scores too slowly, but wait a minute, wasn’t that what England were looking for before Sibley and Denly both ended up doing that job? Yes it was so it will be interesting to see what happens.

It will also be interesting to see which spinners make the cut and how many they pick and whether they will bother picking the likes of Anderson and Broad to play on pitches more suited to spin.