Jason Roy will be told to clear his mind and back his naturally aggressive approach to opening when England’s Champions Trophy campaign gets under way at his home ground of The Oval on Thursday.
With the management optimistic that Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes will all be fit to face Bangladesh in their group opener after recent injury niggles, Roy’s run of four single-figure scores in his past five international innings represents their main headache leading into the tournament curtain-raiser.
Jonny Bairstow, who remains in a seemingly never-ending purple patch, is the alternative option and has already made a career-best 174 opening for Yorkshire this summer – something Trevor Bayliss, the England head coach, said will make the selection chat that follows Wednesday’s pre-match training in south London “interesting”.
The words can be taken as encouragement to the reserve batsman Bairstow, however, with Eoin Morgan having already given Roy his full backing. Under the Bayliss regime, the captain calls the shots and his current leader is all too aware of the damaging effect a late switch can have following the 2015 World Cup debacle.
Bayliss will therefore look to coax Roy out of his current funk by reinforcing the strengths that, by attacking from ball one selflessly, have brought 1,444 runs in 43 one-day internationals at a strike-rate of 102 and provided fast starts in England’s two years of posting monstrous totals.
“You worry about anyone that is out of runs but he’s been important to us in the last two years and the way he plays at the top of the order,” Bayliss said. “So for us to do well in this tournament, one of the things we will need to have is Jason playing well at the top of the order.
“Some players are different but Jason is probably one of the guys who you say if the ball is there you hit it, whether that’s first or second ball. If it’s in your area then give it a good hit. Sometimes some of those players can get into a bit of a rut and start thinking about too much, rather than just keeping it nice and simple and just see the ball and hit it.”
Bayliss put England’s top-order collapse in Monday’s dead-rubber against South Africa – where they became the first side to lose six wickets in the first five overs of a one-day international – down to playing too “tentatively”, a diagnosis that may appear counter-intuitive given some of the aggressive driving that caused a number of downfalls on a green Lord’s surface.
The Australian preaches positive cricket, which is often misconstrued as a gung-ho mentality. He in fact wants players to assert themselves in both attack and defence to get “that extra couple of inches into the ball” upon meeting it. “I haven’t seen a team win a global tournament playing defensively,” Bayliss said. “It’s always a team that backs itself and plays bold cricket.”
Bayliss admitted only Roy truly knows what is going on in his head at present but the outwardly confident 26-year-old has shown he is not afraid of additional scrutiny, having agreed to be one of three England batsmen, along with Alex Hales and Stokes, to sport a microchip in his bat during the Champions Trophy that will give additional data, such as power and bat speed, to the broadcasters.
Whether Stokes plays against Bangladesh as a batsman or all-rounder remains to be seen, having spent Tuesday at a London specialist to investigate further a mystery knee complaint that does not prevent him running but can cause a jarring pain when he bowls.
Stokes, for whom a previous scan over the weekend failed to detect any significant problem, sent down just five overs in the first two matches against South Africa although Morgan will have five front-line members of the attack and Joe Root’s off‑breaks with which to juggle.Both Stokes and Woakes, who was not risked over the weekend after reporting a slight thigh strain but also set to return, played the entire seven-week group stage of the Indian Premier League at the end of long winter schedules but Andrew Strauss, the director of England cricket, claims to have no regrets.
Strauss said: “Injuries are part and parcel of life generally. On one hand you weigh-up the potential risk and on the other you ask what they can potentially gain from that experience.
“Personally, I think the players who have gone over there and played a number of games have benefitted massively. They come back from that experience knowing they’re as good as anyone out there and that deep-rooted belief they get from that is important.
“Having said that, we’ve always got to balance that with the schedules and workloads and the importance of us peaking for important series as an international team. There will be times where it may be the smart thing for a player and us for a player not to play and at other times it might be the smart thing for them to play in the IPL.”
