Adil Is Poised

By Gary Watton
July 2 2015

Like a game of cat and mouse, England's selectors will insist on choosing Adil Rashid for their squad, as in the tour of the West Indies, but it remains far from certain that the all-rounder's inclusion in the thirteen for the first Ashes test next week won't also result in exclusion once more from the final XI.

The England cricket selectors are notoriously cautious, but given the change of guard on the coaching front and the recent dynamic approach undertaken by the one-day team, maybe just maybe the selectors will adopt a more bold approach to test team selection and even think outside of the box. If this is the new dispensation, and God knows it's rather helpful to outfox the Australians by being less than predictable, then the short-listing of Rashid may be more than a consolation prize for the Yorkshire leg spinner.

We can only surmise what is going on inside the pretty little heads of the England brains trust, but permit me to speculate the following. Firstly, the short-listing of Rashid may prove to be nothing more than a smokescreen, designed to hoodwink the Aussies by hinting at a double-headed spin attack in Cardiff. We tried a twin track spin approach in the principality before, against the same nice opponents back in 2009, and it didn't pay dividends then. Gone, it seems, are the days when England field two specialist spinners in a home test, which is a shame, given how effective Edmonds and Emburey were in tandem in the 1985 Ashes series in Blighty. Ultimately, the admirable Joe Root appears to be the back-up, part-time spin option anyway.

Alternatively, Rashid may be chosen ahead of Moeen Ali, but this is unlikely. Instead, I would like to offload the following idea. Gary Ballance, I'm afraid, has been in wretched form since mid-April. He has done nothing of substance for either England or Yorkshire in the last two months. GB can't buy a score at present. Do England really want to throw an out-of-form Ballance to the Aussie lions? How about upgrading Bell to number three and moving Moeen Ali up the order (he too could bat at three, having opened the batting in many one-day internationals). Rashid could be fitted in as a very good number seven or number eight. Would the replacement of the recently ineffective Ballance by Rashid really undermine our batting? England would gain another all-rounder (one too many perhaps?) and have lots of bowling options, a fact which is crucial when one considers that we must take twenty Australian wickets to win a test, and this may be no small order.

In the last analysis, England, and their captain in particular, are a bit insecure about the batting, so they will persist in packing the team with about seven batsmen, including a wicketkeeper-batsman. Rashid looks set to just miss out again at Cardiff, unless the selectors call time on their game of tease with the popular and wholehearted Yorkshire spinner.