Jofra Archer's incredible rise in the global game has taken another step on Tuesday morning as he was named in England's final squad for the World Cup, alongside Liam Dawson, who has not played for England this year.
England have made three changes to the provisional squad they announced last month.
Archer replaces David Willey, while Dawson replaces Joe Denly, and James Vince unsurprisingly comes in for Alex Hales, who was discarded after serving a ban for a second failed recreational drugs test.
National selector Ed Smith believes he has a squad “clearly good enough to win the World Cup” — something no England team has ever achieved — but admitted “it was a very difficult decision” to leave out Willey.
“We had more players we wanted to fit into the squad than we were allowed to,” he explained.
England's 15-man World Cup squad
Eoin Morgan (Middlesex) captain, Moeen Ali (Worcestershire), Jofra Archer (Sussex), Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire), Jos Buttler (Lancashire), Tom Curran (Surrey), Liam Dawson (Hampshire), Liam Plunkett (Surrey), Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Jason Roy (Surrey), Ben Stokes (Durham), James Vince (Hampshire), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire), Mark Wood (Durham)
“We had to come down to 15 for the final squad. David Willey has been a big part of the one-day side and it was a very tough call.
“The new ball area is strong at the moment, so David is very unfortunate to miss out. He could easily have been in that squad, and deserves to be, but that’s sport.
"Sometimes there are more deserving people than there are places in the squad.”
For all Willey’s claims — he had played in 46 of England’s 88 ODIs since the last World Cup — Smith described Archer as “bringing special things to a cricket field”.
Having impressed for Sussex and around the world in T20 cricket, Archer — who was born in Barbados but has a British father and passport — only qualified to play for England in March after the ECB relaxed their qualification rules from seven years to three, bringing them in line with other nations.
