There were few major surprises from England’s Test squad announcement on Tuesday morning. As expected, Alex Hales came into the squad in the place of Adam Lyth after the Yorkshire opener’s disastrous Ashes series, and Zafar Ansari was included as the third spin option to complement Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali.
James Taylor appears to be the back-up middle-order batsman, and Liam Plunkett, Mark Wood and Steven Finn are set to battle for the third seamer’s role in the side.
However, in omitting one unglamorous county player, England have made a huge mistake.
With the likes of Junaid Khan, Rahat Ali, Wahab Riaz and Imran Khan among the contenders to take the new ball for Pakistan in the UAE, batting at the top of the order will not necessarily be an easy prospect, and England have left themselves few options open.
With the exception of captain Alastair Cook, Alex Hales is the only specialist opening batsman in the squad, and has endured a horrible run of form in England’s recent ODI series against Australia. After just 53 runs in five innings, there was some media speculation that the Nottinghamshire batsman had played himself out of the Test side, but national selector James Whittaker said “[he] has scored heavily for Nottinghamshire in first-class cricket this season, has shown he can play match-winning innings for England in white ball cricket and fully deserves an opportunity to compete for a place at the top of the order in our Test side.”
Another name that has been mentioned as a potential partner for Cook on 13th October in Abu Dhabi is that of Moeen Ali. The batting all-rounder had a decent Ashes series, taking twelve wickets and scoring 293 runs in eight innings, but found himself batting at number eight and often having the shepherd the tail. It has been suggested that the Worcestershire man would provide an aggressive foil to the more defensive Cook, but having never opened the batting in first-class cricket, Moeen would be a risky selection at the top of the order.
The man himself claims he would relish the step up; at the start of September he told Sky: “I certainly wouldn’t mind opening, in Tests as well as white-ball cricket – even though I’ve never done it in first-class cricket, I have in the second team as well as in one-day stuff with Worcestershire and England.” However, unless England plan on playing four specialist bowlers and two all-rounders, there is seemingly little advantage of putting him at the order over Hales.
The final opening option is the squad is Zafar Ansari. The Surrey all-rounder is in the squad as a third spinner, but in the event that either England decide to play all three of their options, or if one of Rashid and Moeen has a dire start to the series, he may be thrust into an opening berth to help balance the team.
However, his record in Division Two of this season’s County Championship does not paint the picture of a match-winning option. His strike-rate of just 38.8 is likely to count against him, and a season of 771 runs in 22 innings, with just one hundred and four fifties suggests that he is hardly likely to steer England to any victories.
Where are all the opening batsmen then? Since Andrew Strauss’ retirement in 2012, six men have opened the batting with Cook in Test Matches – what has happened to them all?
Adam Lyth and Sam Robson have both been given a summer to prove their worth in the last two years and shown their poor technique, Jonathan Trott retired from international cricket after an abysmal series in the West Indies in the spring of 2015, Michael Carberry was unconvincing against high quality fast bowling and Joe Root has enjoyed a huge deal of success in the middle order.
In fact, the one member of the sextet to have been given an opportunity in that time to have played the most Tests is the one who has proved his worth as a top-order batsman elsewhere: Nick Compton.
Since leaving Somerset over the winter to try and force his way back into the squad, Middlesex’s number three has amassed some 1100 runs in the County Championship’s top division this year; only Scott Borthwick, James Hildreth and Luke Wright have managed more.
However, Compton is a man who can stand up and be counted when it matters most. In his nine Tests, Compton managed two hundreds, both of which were on the 2012/13 winter tour to New Zealand. The first of these was an innings of true grit; England were 293 runs behind their hosts after the first innings, but a 310-ball 117 from the right-hander was enough to save the game and secure a draw in difficult circumstances.
A 224-ball century then followed in the next innings he played, as he was dismissed for exactly 100 to put England in a strong position on the first day of the Wellington Test. After a poor run of form at the start of the 2013 home season, Compton was then harshly dropped, and England have failed to settle on an opening partner for Cook ever since.
In the two years after his omission, he has not lost the knack of coming up with runs when it matters most, and a prime example came of this in last week’s County Championship game between Middlesex and Yorkshire at Lord’s. With a deficit of 106 runs with nine second-innings wickets in hand when Compton walked to the crease, Middlesex had lost another two wickets before the 32-year-old faced a ball, and it seemed as though an innings defeat was imminently possible. Compton, though, had other ideas. His 261-ball 149 was his highest score of the season, and took the hosts into a commanding position in the match, which they somehow managed to win by 246 runs despite their seemingly hopeless position.
This led ESPNCricinfo’s George Dobell to tweet “if Nick Compton kicked in James Whittaker’s door and wrote ‘Pick Me’ in blood on [the] walls he couldn’t have made his point better,” but despite a meeting with England’s chair of selectors on Monday, Compton was omitted from the squad.
A high-stakes tour should lead to the selection of players who can manage big situations. Hales’ poor form, Moeen’s lack of opening experience and Ansari’s mediocre Division Two record do not suggest that any of them will be able to make the most of an opportunity at the top of the order; omitting Compton may well prove to have been a glaring error.
