News of a season-ending hamstring injury to ex-captain, Heather Knight cuts two ways.
She has proved England’s most reliable batter in the T20 series against the West Indies. In her absence the top order looks potentially vulnerable again. Apart from her only the new captain, Nat Sciver-Brunt, can be relied on to provide runs in profusion.
But the coming series of ODIs will present an altered group of players from the T20s. Batters will need a different skill set to last through a full 50 overs. Can Knight’s absence have its advantages, not least in reducing the average age and spreading responsibility for scoring big runs further?
Charlotte Edwards’ immediate response was to call Alice Capsey back into the squad, which now looks like this:
Nat Sciver-Brunt (captain, The Blaze), Alice Davidson-Richards (Surrey), Emily Arlott (Warwickshire), Tammy Beaumont (The Blaze), Lauren Bell (Hampshire), Kate Cross (Lancashire), Charlie Dean (Somerset), Sophia Dunkley (Surrey), Mahika Gaur (Lancashire), Sarah Glenn (The Blaze), Amy Jones (The Blaze), Emma Lamb (Lancashire), Linsey Smith (Hampshire), Alice Capsey (Surrey).
Those fourteen mean that three will sit out in each of the three matches. If Edwards sticks rigidly to her stated selection methods, we can expect the eleven players most in form to constitiute her choice for the opening match at Derby tomorrow. They would not include Capsey, who is sill hunting for a return to consistency. Some might consider her recall fortunate; others as Edwards’ faith in her still youthful promise.
That leaves open the question of team balance, a matter that has troubled cricketing brains across the decades. Of those fourteen Arlott, Bell, Cross, Filer and Gaur all compete for the right to use the new ball. Lauren Filer makes a welcome return to the strength from injury; Mahika Gaur the punt for the future, who happens to be left-handed too. Does Cross find favour because of her experience and control?
The Derby square has never been famed for its favour to spin. Dean, Glenn and Smith will be hopeful of selection, but all three? Rather unlikely.
That’s just for starters. Then comes the question: do the selectors see this series as a chance to experiment more bravely, setting the standards of the current opposition against the greater challenges they may face when the Indians arrive? Will they give everyone a chance or opt strictly for what they see as England’s best?
We won’t know the answers to these and more questions till moments before battle-stations are assumed tomorrow, 30 May at the County Ground Derby at 13.00.
The remaining fixtures look like this:
4 June, Uptonsteel County Ground, Leicester; start 13.00
7 June, The Cooper Associates County Ground, Taunton; start 11.00
