Eight fixtures start in the County Championship on Tuesday morning and, as occurred at the start of the season, the clarion call from the England head coach, Trevor Bayliss, is for domestic cricketers to demand Test selection through an avalanche of runs and wickets.
Securing nine bilateral trophies and the No1 spot in the Test rankings – the latter a late possibility going into the fourth Test with Pakistan, and one that has now gone to the tourists following the shambolic draw between West Indies and India in Trinidad on Monday – proved, like the fruit hanging above Tantalus, just out of reach for Alastair Cook’s team during a summer when their progress felt somewhat stifled.
While established players such as Cook, Joe Root and Jimmy Anderson reconfirmed their eminence, the Test side, bar the consolidation of Jonny Bairstow’s place and the emergence of Chris Woakes as a genuine international seamer, remains pock-marked looking ahead to the pre-Christmas tours to Bangladesh and India.
The selectors have three rounds of first-class matches from which to find solutions to problems that are now perennial, with slots at opener, in the middle order and among the spin department all up for grabs before Bayliss, James Whitaker, Mick Newell and Angus Fraser convene in the second week of September to draw up their winter plans.
The second of these three issues, through the failure of James Vince to make the step up and a slightly underwhelming comeback from Gary Ballance, is why Bayliss has not only thrown down the gauntlet to the domestic game but also sought out Ian Bell for a chat at Edgbaston last week, in order to establish whether the fire in the 34-year-old’s eyes – one that was perceived to have waned before he was dropped last year – has now returned.
Contrary to pre-season predictions Bell has not made a telling case for a comeback in the runs column, averaging 37 going into Warwickshire’s 13th match of the season at Durham in what has been a middling season of results for the county under his captaincy. Yet the temptation among a section of the brains trust to restore him to the Test side is understandable; with 118 caps, 7,727 runs, 22 centuries and a cover-drive to die for, the right-hander has a weight of experience on which to draw.
Experience would certainly not go amiss for an England team spasmodically inconsistent and poised to take on India in their own backyard. Only a soggy outfield in St John’s this week denied Virat Kohli’s side the world No1 ranking, while they appear to have most bases covered and can draw comfort from a home record that features one series defeat in the past 12 years, albeit at the hands of Cook’s class of 2012.
This time there is no Kevin Pietersen to provide punch in the England middle order, however, and no dual threat of Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar with ball in hand. So, while the selection policy over the past 18 months has, bar Nick Compton’s return in December, been one of looking forward, the idea of a refurbished and re-energised Bell – if this is indeed the case – will be one of the possibles discussed should Hampshire’s Vince and Yorkshire’s Ballance, returning to county cricket this week to face Somerset and Nottinghamshire respectively, fail to mount an un-ignorable end-of-season assault.
Such pragmatic thoughts bring the name of Gareth Batty, the leading English spinner in Division One, into the mix, 11 years after the last of his seven Test caps. Aged 38, the off-spinner would be short-term thinking with perhaps some long-term gain, should his experience as the third man behind Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid rub off as a de facto player-coach; his Surrey team‑mate Zafar Ansari is the more youthful alternative and, as a left-armer, would give England three options, although he is currently sidelined by a back complaint.
Batty’s side, who sit third in the Division One table following an impressive recovery from a shaky start to the campaign, take on Lancashire at The Oval, whose opener Haseeb Hameed is pressing hard to usurp the Test incumbent Alex Hales after passing 1,000 runs this season during his centuries in each innings against Yorkshire last week. An insatiable (and almost outdated) appetite for batting long has brought Hameed very much into the thoughts of the England management, despite his being only 19.
How the teenager copes with the additional scrutiny in the coming weeks will be interesting, not least since Bayliss, after the drawn series with Pakistan, noted how the fortunes of previous possibles appeared to fade once the media spotlight fell on them. Durham’s Scott Borthwick, who may have become similarly distracted by interest in his services from Yorkshire and Surrey, being the unnamed but obvious player in question.
So while England’s limited-overs squad go into their series with Pakistan, starting in Southampton on Tuesday, as a settled side with no room for the burgeoning talents of Northamptonshire’s Ben Duckett or Kent’s Sam Billings at present, the makeup of the Test team will be dictated over the coming weeks in the County Championship. As well as the opportunity to claw back the leaders, Middlesex, during a round they sit out, there is plenty to play for as individuals.
