Ali Martin
A record beckons for Gareth Batty with the Surrey captain, who was named on Friday morning in England’s squad for the tour of Bangladesh, poised to register the longest gap between appearances in terms of Tests played if he wins an eighth cap this winter.
Should the off-spinner play in Chittagong on 20 October he will have missed 142 Tests since his previous outing against the same opposition at Chester-le-Street in 2005, surpassing the 114-match hiatus endured by Martin Bicknell, the former Surrey seamer, before his 2003 comeback against South Africa at Headingley.
“It’s a wonderful phone call to get,” said Batty, who will have turned 39 before the first Test and whose 11 years out of Test cricket would still be half the time John Traicos waited between his last cap for South Africa in 1970 and his first for Zimbabwe in 1992.
“Until you get out there you don’t know, but certainly the last few years I feel I have learned more about my game; I understand my body and bowled better, more consistently. I feel in a good place and maybe in the younger part of my career I didn’t feel as confident. So, fingers crossed, that stands me in good stead if I get an opportunity.”
Batty, who will lead Surrey against Warwickshire in the Royal London Cup final at Lord’s on Saturday, was one of four spinners to be included in the touring party along with Zafar Ansari – the Surrey left-armer earns a spot a year and a day since a broken thumb denied him a call-up last winter – and the first-choice pairing of Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid. James Whitaker, the national selector, claimed Batty’s selection owed as much to his terrier-like personality as to his 120 first-class wickets over the past three seasons.
“Gareth was close to selection last year,” Whitaker said. “We have been monitoring him and what we recognise is he’s still one of the leading off-spinners in the country. It’s not only on-field experience but off-field as well. We like his enthusiasm for the challenge. In tough conditions, he can thrive. Add his motivational skills as captain, it will all be important.”
At the other end of the spectrum in terms of experience is Lancashire’s Haseeb Hameed – born in 1997, the same year as Batty’s first-class debut – who at 19 is in line to become only the second teenager to open for England, after Jack Crawford against South Africa in 1906 and, alongside Northamptonshire’s Ben Duckett, is one of two replacements in the Test squad for the voluntarily absent Alex Hales.
Both Hameed and Duckett, himself only 21, will get the chance to stake their claim as Alastair Cook’s ninth opening partner since the retirement of Andrew Strauss in 2012 in the two two-day warmup matches that precede the first Test, with the captain, who will fly out early and net with the one-day squad, due to miss these fixtures to attend the birth of his second child.
The two hopefuls are certainly contrasting, with the right-hander Hameed accumulating 1,154 runs in Division One this summer and earning the tag of “Baby Boycott”, while Duckett, a left-hander, is the more aggressive and so could yet be more to the liking of the head coach, Trevor Bayliss. The retained Gary Ballance in the middle order may also feel twitchy about the latter’s rising star, or the prospect of Moeen moving up to allow three spinners into the side.
“I’m still learning with the red-ball stuff and haven’t nailed my game in that format just yet,” said Duckett, who has scored 1,338 runs in Division Two, including two double-hundreds, to go with some blistering white-ball cricket in Northamptonshire’s T20 Blast victory and for the Lions.
“I do play aggressively in first-class cricket and that has worked for me at the minute, but there is plenty for me to learn in the Test game. One thing I do have is my ability to play against spin. I think in Bangladesh they could bowl spin first change so that is something I’d be confident in facing and if I was given a chance then I’ll try and be as positive as I can be and fingers crossed it pays off. I played hockey at school, so the sweeps, reverse sweeps and quick hands might have come from that.”
With Eoin Morgan and Hales missing the three-match one-day series that begins the tour in Dhaka on 7 October due to their security concerns, Duckett will also get his chance of a limited overs debut, with Sam Billings and James Vince also included. The latter has been dropped from the Test squad following a tough first summer but comes into the 50-over party in place of Joe Root, who gets two weeks extra rest.
Mark Wood, the Durham fast bowler, earns his first Test call-up in almost a year having proved his fitness and pace, post-ankle surgery, in the one-day series with Pakistan, with the seam attack, which also includes Steven Finn, likely to be rotated given the five Tests that follow in India before Christmas. The squad for this second leg of the winter, which features no tour games beforehand, will be named at a later date.
England Test squad Alastair Cook (Essex; captain), Moeen Ali (Worcestershire), James Anderson (Lancashire), Zafar Ansari (Surrey), Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire), Gary Ballance (Yorkshire), Gareth Batty (Surrey), Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire), Jos Buttler (Lancashire), Ben Duckett (Northamptonshire), Steven Finn (Middlesex), Haseeb Hameed (Lancashire), Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Ben Stokes (Durham), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire), Mark Wood (Durham).
One-day international squad Jos Buttler (Lancashire; captain), Moeen Ali (Worcestershire), Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire), Jake Ball (Nottinghamshire), Sam Billings (Kent), Liam Dawson (Hampshire), Ben Duckett (Northamptonshire), Liam Plunkett (Yorkshire), Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Jason Roy (Surrey), Ben Stokes (Durham), James Vince (Hampshire), David Willey (Yorkshire), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire), Mark Wood (Durham).
