Specsavers Tests Squad and series details

England

JE Root (capt) MM Ali JM Anderson JM Bairstow SCJ Broad JC Buttler (wkt) AN Cook SM Curran KK Jennings OJD Pope AU Rashid BA Stokes JM Vince CR Woakes

Fixtures Fourth Test Ageas Bowl Aug 30-Sept 3. Fifth Test The Oval, Sept 7-11.

Results

First Test (Edgbaston) England won by 31 runs. Second Test (Lord’s) England won by an innings and 159 runs. Third Test (Trent Bridge) India won by 203 runs. mould in the second Test against India at Lord’s, when he scored 93 in his match-winning stand with Chris Woakes, but India had batted first and he had kept for only 35.2 overs.

Bayliss has little truck, however, with the suggestion that Bairstow, as a specialist batsman, could open. “It’s a bit different to him opening in one-day cricket where the wickets are nice and flat. He can hit through the ball. That sort of number, four or five, suits him down to the ground.”

The trouble is that a player with a broken finger cannot field in the slips, and the position of second slip has to be filled because Buttler will resume keeping.

KL Rahul demonstrated how second is the busiest of the slip positions when he caught seven chances out of seven at Trent Bridge; while for England, Dawid Malan in the first Test and Buttler in the last two dropped half their chances.

As Root wants to concentrate on his captaincy at mid-off, Vince could also fill the role of second slip. Ollie Pope has dropped his only slip chance and could be one of the three omitted from the 14-man squad, along with the blameless Sam Curran – and Bairstow or Vince.

“If you look at the catches we have dropped, a great deal of them are below knee height,” Bayliss said. “So we’re trying to do a lot of work on low catches, and especially low catches when we’ve got to move left or right.”