The England selectors have named a 13-man squad for the third Test at Edgbaston now Ben Stokes has been ruled out with a calf injury. Stokes was forced to leave the field during the second Test at Old Trafford and a scan has shown a tear to his right calf, which could preclude any more cricket this summer. Jake Ball, Steven Finn and Adil Rashid are added to the remaining 10 fit players who played in Manchester.
The loss of Stokes’s all-round skills makes it more difficult to balance the side. Having missed the last two Tests of the Sri Lanka series and the subsequent white-ball matches to undergo an operation on his left knee, Stokes had recovered well enough to be considered for a place as a batsman only for the first Test against Pakistan at Lord’s. Instead he played for Durham against Lancashire, after which he was deemed fit to resume his all-round role.
England will probably revert to the same balance to the team as they had during Stokes’s previous Test absence. However, the task has been made to look simpler due to the remarkable all-round form of Chris Woakes. Very much a fringe player during the winter, and with his future prospects under scrutiny, he has made himself indispensable, with an 11-wicket bowling performance at Lord’s and an excellent half century at Old Trafford. It is Stokes’s pace bowling rather than his batting that will most likely be missed.
Selection for the final 11 for the Test that starts on Wednesday 3 August will probably come down to a straight choice between Finn and Ball, with Rashid unlikely to be wanted unless there is a real chance the pitch will help spin. Moeen Ali remains England’s first-choice spinner.
Against Sri Lanka, it was Woakes rather than Finn who benefited from Stokes’s absence, although with Finn palpably struggling with his game, there had been a strong case for including Ball, who had been bowling superbly for Nottinghamshire.
In the absence of Jimmy Anderson, Ball did play in the first Pakistan Test along with Finn but with Anderson’s return at Old Trafford neither were chosen.
There has been a definite shift in form, though. It has been a gradual process but at Lord’s, finally, Finn produced some bowling that was better than anything he had shown for several years. It was ironic, then, that having stuck with Finn when he was not able to produce his best, Woakes’s form meant he was omitted when on song. It would be an absurd decision not to include Finn now, given his astonishing strike rate and fond memories of Edgbaston.
The four England selectors have decided not to tinker with the batting, and under the circumstances James Vince in particular can consider himself fortunate they are being so charitable. The earlier championing of him by Trevor Bayliss appears to have been tempered by more ambivalence and thus far Vince has shown no sign he has learned anything about elevating his game to international standard. First and foremost Test batting is about how many runs a batsman makes, not how he gets them: there are no bonus runs for style. Vince is pleasing on the eye, as all off-side specialists are, but it is a temperamentally poor player who cannot recognise when he is being set up by bowlers, or worse, does recognise it but chooses to carry on in a habitual manner all the same.
To drive expansively and nick off once is forgiveable; to do it twice is asking for questions; to do it consistently is just amateur. He is becoming what cricketers know as a jazz-hat, a jazzer. It is not a compliment.
This will be a testing time for Alex Hales too, his inability to make runs at Old Trafford put into perspective by the ease with which Alastair Cook and Joe Root played. Earlier in the summer it looked as if Hales was starting to come to terms with the role but he has yet to kick on. There are some massive runs being scored by the Lions at the moment, and some promising openers in particular. Like Vince, Hales does not have time on his side.
