The brutal truth is that England have three dead men walking in their squad and there are still three Tests to go. This may not be unprecedented on tour but it might be unnecessary.
Ben Duckett, Gary Ballance and Zafar Ansari, to use the ill-chosen yet candid assessment of Ashley Giles when talking about Steven Finn during England’s one-day campaign in Australia in January 2014, are currently “unselectable”. With Stuart Broad injured, England are picking from 13 for the Test in Mohali.
There is no disgrace in this for the unfortunate trio, but such redundancy could become a more regular occurrence as overseas tours increasingly comprise only Test matches without any games in between for players to recover touch and confidence.
Alastair Cook, who takes the wellbeing of the younger members of his tour party very seriously, was sympathetic to the plight of Duckett, the latest batsman to be dropped. Unwittingly, when explaining the inclusion of Jos Buttler at Duckett’s expense, he may also have identified one of the flaws of the squad selected.
“There’s a better mix of right- and left-hands now, though if people are playing well it makes no difference at all,” Cook said. “There’s been many a top order with six out of seven right-handers and if they play well no one mentions it all.”
Responding to the idea that the squad could be augmented or changed in Mumbai, England’s next port of call, he said: “Your suggestion is a valid one … but they [the possible replacements] could be sitting at home with their coats and wellies on so to come out here doesn’t make sense either.”
Here Cook expresses the traditional argument for keeping the original squad together come what may. It is hard to go from coats and wellies straight into the blazing sun, although Colin Cowdrey, a week before his 42nd birthday, found the challenge irresistible in the winter of 1974-75, which saw the awesome union of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson come to pass.
But four decades on the world has shrunk as rapidly as the coffers of the body running the English game have expanded.
Now the England and Wales Cricket Board spends hundreds of thousands of pounds each year on the “international pathway”. This winter more than 50 players, identified as possible future internationals, are being sent around the globe. Usually most of them end up in Dubai for a training camp and a few fixtures under the eye of Andy Flower, which is the case this winter.
So what is to stop a shuffling of personnel between Dubai and Mumbai? Could Duckett be spared traipsing around India, mulling over his past few dismissals at the hands of Ravi Ashwin and go off to the United Arab Emirates, where he might be able to remind himself that he can bat and demonstrate to others why he might be retained in England’s one-day squad while someone such as Tom Westley could be shipped to Mumbai?
Mostly this does not happen because of a lack of precedent. It is commonplace to send for a replacement when an original party member is injured but not when someone has become “unselectable” because of a complete loss of confidence.
In fact there have been a few precedents in recent times and they usually involve Ian Salisbury and Finn. On the 1992-93 tour of India, Salisbury was a late addition to the touring party essentially as a net bowler and to gain experience. Then in Kolkata, to general consternation, the brains trust picked him in the first Test team in preference to John Emburey and Phil Tufnell – a plan that did not work frightfully well. By the same token Salisbury was removed from the England touring squad for Sri Lanka in 2001, having performed poorly in Pakistan beforehand, to be replaced by Robert Croft.
As for Finn he may have been unselectable in 2014 in Australia, but in March 2010 he was added late to the squad in Bangladesh and he immediately leapfrogged an original selection, Liam Plunkett, making his Test debut in Chittagong – in Cook’s first match as England captain.
My guess is that Duckett – and maybe one or two others in this squad – would not mind being replaced, or reshuffled, provided there is no reduction in their pay, of course. They might even welcome the escape but there is no indication that this mildly revolutionary move is about to take place. In the future the Lions squad might be strategically placed every winter to make this possible.
Instead Duckett remains and he can only take solace in the words of his captain. “Ben won’t be the only good player who has ever got dropped,” said Cook on the eve of the Mohali Test, “and he has an England future. He said he thought he was a pretty decent player of spin [no doubt that is the case when batting in aggressive vein for Northamptonshire in Division Two] and he is. But he just has an issue, which has unfortunately been found out quite quickly [against quality off-spinners attacking his leg stump]. He can go and address that and come again because he’s a very talented and exciting cricketer in all three forms.”
But is India, with its constant reminders of his recent traumas, the best place for Duckett to do that over the next three and a half weeks?
