Joe Denly has been asked to fly out to Sri Lanka early after a side strain ruled out Liam Dawson from England’s remaining one-day games and left the Hampshire left-armer’s World Cup hopes in the balance.
Denly is a batsman by trade but his leg-spin has blossomed in recent seasons and he is now considered an all-rounder. The 32-year-old Kent right-hander was already part of the Test squad who will arrive on 25 October but could now add to the last of nine one-day caps won in 2009.
England have only eight one-day internationals before their provisional World Cup squad needs to be submitted on 23 April – three more in Sri Lanka starting on Wednesday and five in the Caribbean from January – and Denly has the chance to usurp Dawson as the utility man and third spinner behind Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid.
Dawson is understood to have felt a problem in the second of six overs he sent down during Saturday’s 31-run DLS victory over Sri Lanka in Dambulla – a result that put England 1-0 up in the series – but with the adrenaline flowing the left-armer continued to bowl, claiming the wicket of Kusal Perera along the way.
The 28-year-old was a glum onlooker as England trained at the picturesque Pallekele Stadium, a session in which the groundstaff had to remove a cobra from near the pavilion.
With Denly not expected to arrive in time for the match and Liam Plunkett unlikely to be considered after joining the squad on Tuesday following his wedding, Mark Wood, Sam Curran and Tom Curran were all straining to press their claims for a start.
If that trio are also jostling for the remaining places in the World Cup squad, one bowler inked into Eoin Morgan’s plans is Chris Woakes, who took three wickets during his opening burst on Saturday to enter England’s all-time top 10 with 112 victims.
Though reluctant to call himself the leader of the attack – a title bestowed by the Test team’s equivalent, Jimmy Anderson – Woakes is indisputably the leading powerplay bowler in ODIs, with no rival matching his 23 wickets in the first 10 overs since the start of 2017, nor a dot-ball percentage of 73.
“Getting wickets up front is essential as it stems the run flow straight away and puts pressure on the guys coming in,” Woakes said. “It’s obviously a group effort. I suppose when you take the new ball and have done it for a while, you look like the leader. But there will be days when I don’t bowl as well as others and someone else has to step up.”
The Warwickshire all-rounder also remains a key component of a powerful batting order that usually runs deep but has struggled to cope with Lasith Malinga’s dipping slower-ball yorkers as the slingy 35-year-old claimed his first five-wicket haul since 2014.
Woakes, trapped lbw by Malinga, albeit after a curious Hawk-Eye projection on review, said: “We’ll have a chat as a batting group and review how we went in the last game. We certainly feel we could play him better. We can’t keep letting him get wickets like that.
“His arm speed is very fast. He’s probably not as quick as he used to be but his arm speed is still up there and it doesn’t slow down for that slower ball. And it comes out from behind the umpire, so it’s hard to see. It is tricky but we have to find a way.”
