Can the county game supply talent to fill England holes?

Early championship form could earn Test call-ups for new and old faces after poor winter Down Under

It used to be said that, every winter, the England selectors reserved a couple of spots in the touring squad for those who performed best in the end-of-season one-day cup final. All runs are equal, but runs here were a lot more equal than others. This year, it is runs and wickets in April and early May that have the potential to win national recognition. On May 24, England play their opening Test of the summer, against Pakistan; for the pretenders, there are potential slots throughout the side.

Perhaps not since England’s last ignominious Ashes tour, in 2013-14, have the Test team been in a state of such flux at the start of a county summer.

There are legitimate doubts over the long-term futures of each of the top three – Alastair Cook, Mark Stoneman and James Vince; questions about who is the best option as spinner; and bewilderment over the make-up of the seam attack – not just who will eventually replace James Anderson and Stuart Broad, but also where England can find the 90mph bowlers that head coach Trevor Bayliss has identified as essential to improve the egregious recent record abroad.

This is a team in flux and, after not winning in their past 13 away Tests – England’s worst-ever run – there could be no other way. “We’ve probably got three or four positions in the Test team still trying to make their way and prove to everyone they are good enough at that level,” Bayliss admitted after New Zealand held on to win the Test series last week, a suitably bleak way for England’s Test winter to end.

Identifying potential Test players is complicated by how the sport’s global landscape is changing. This year, Alex Hales and Adil Rashid announced that they were becoming limited-overs specialists; with a good month of County Championship cricket at the start of the season, both could very conceivably have won Test recalls.

Then there is the impact of the Indian Premier League, where Hales now finds himself as a replacement player. Another late replacement, Tom Curran, played two Ashes Tests last winter.

Consider Jos Buttler, who averaged 38.50 during his last Test action, the three games he played in India at the end of 2016. He is still notionally available but, as with Curran, how can England pick Buttler for the first Test against Pakistan based on his IPL form?

There are two distinct schools of thought in this debate. The first is that the Test and the limited-overs formats are so distinct that it is nearly impossible to bridge the gap. As such, England’s overall needs are better served by letting their IPL players hone their T20 games; for Test selection, all that should matter is how players perform in County Championship cricket.

The second school suggests that, given how poorly England’s batsmen have fared for so long – Dawid Malan is the only specialist batsman to cement his place since Joe Root made his debut in 2012 – England need to think again. Perhaps proven success in international cricket, against many of the same bowlers who play Tests, is more valuable currency than any number of red-ball runs in April and May – which are, after all, earned in conditions utterly dissimilar to those that are the norm in the Test game. For the first Test of last summer, England recalled Gary Ballance, who was averaging 101 for Yorkshire in the season at the time. He failed to pass 35 in four innings against South Africa, and has since been dropped from the squad entirely.

Who will be entrusted with navigating this uncertain terrain remains unclear. England begin the new season with a new selection structure, after ditching the old model, which was criticised for allowing those working as county coaches or directors of cricket to double as selectors. In its place, there will be an independent national selector, a deputy, and an extended scouting network who report to them.

In many ways, this system amounts to recognition that, for all the focus on Bayliss and his £450,000 annual salary, at Test level, selection is more important than coaching. A coach can tweak only a little with a player’s technique during a series – indeed, most coaches believe that tinkering too much will leave a player worse off than when they started. But the selectors can ensure that the team on the field provide the best possible chance of victory. It follows that the selectors should be both better rewarded and more accountable.

England’s selection regime will be better resourced than ever before – as they need to be, with such an onerous task. As the season begins, who will pick the team for the opening Test is as unclear as who will be in it.

Who will pick the team for the opening Test is as unclear as who will be in it