England could drop Broad for Sri Lanka but keep him as home banker
The challenges of Tests are so varied that players must accept new selection rules, writes Tim Wigmore
Cricketers do not like being shuffled around like cards deployed only when the time is right. In recent years, Australia have taken to dropping Usman Khawaja when they are in Asia: not unreasonably, given that he averages 14.62 there against 59.38 in Asia. “It creates a lot of instability in the team I reckon, going in and out for everyone,” Khawaja said last year. “I’m not really sure why they do it now.”
Khawaja’s point of view, while understandable, is not entirely coherent. Like no other sport, the essence of Test cricket varies depending on the conditions. The challenges of playing at Lord’s,
Chennai or Perth are not subtly different changes; they are tantamount to completely different sports, as Nathan Leamon, England’s team analyst, observes. That helps explain why England have simultaneously gone seven series undefeated at home while failing to win any of their past 13 away Tests.
No one wants a return to the selectorial bedlam of the 1990s. But there is a sense that there has been an overcorrection. The emphasis on stability brings downsides. It means it is hard to leave players out when they are in poor form. Instead, they must attempt to regain form in the glare of international cricket which can mean – as with Mark Stoneman and
Dawid Malan – that they not only fail to score runs but also shell catches. When such players are eventually ditched, it feels terminal; their ordeal,
therefore, jeopardises the squad’s overall strength. It ought to be possible to have a fluid team yet a stable squad. It simply does not follow that, for England, the best players to win this Test at the Oval are also the best ones to win at Galle in two months. Sri Lanka’s evisceration of South Africa in July offered a preview of what England can expect: pitches that offer raging turn from the very first ball.
Under Ed Smith, England are hinting at recalibrating their thinking. In place of a rigid hierarchy of players, conceiving of this as essentially fixed – save for picking an extra spinner, say, in Asia – England want to embrace more flexibility to improve their dreadful away record. “If you’ve got 16 or 17 cricketers as your core, you should have a strong team culture and still make decisions tactically,” Smith said recently. “You shouldn’t feel you’re
doing the wrong thing by someone if you don’t pick the same side for every game.” If followed up, this amounts to a radical philosophical change. It points to a future in which being dropped could be destigmatised. Instead, being omitted would be no more terminal than it is for a footballer.
Over the last nine years, Stuart Broad has not been dropped for a single Test, only left out for injury or to manage his workload. On the second day at the Oval, he combined assured, sensible batting with a zesty new ball spell, which included snaring Shikhar Dhawan with his first ball.
It was very easy to imagine that, in the Ashes next summer, Broad will still be among England’s best seamers. But whether this means he should take the new ball in Sri Lanka is a very different question. Broad averages 36.92 in Asia and, given the balance of the side – England are likely to want three spinners – there is a strong case for saying that Broad simply does not get
into England’s best 11 there, given the presence of James Anderson and the skills of Ben Stokes, Sam Curran and Chris Woakes.
It is very possible that Broad could be omitted – not rested – from the tour of Sri Lanka, and yet remain a firstchoice bowler in English conditions. This would mark a distinct shift. When cricketers of Broad’s seniority are left out, it has been because they are very explicitly rested – like Andrew Strauss for the tour of Bangladesh in 2010 – or are ditched for good. Similar thinking could lead England to other unusual selections. Joe Denly, with his combination of proficiency playing spin and useful leg spin, is regarded as a pragmatic pick for the Sri Lanka tour.
And so if Broad, despite a good series against India, is excluded for the tour to Sri Lanka, it will be a window into England’s new thinking: a belief that the challenges of Tests are so multifarious that they cannot be conquered by a team – only a squad.