Pain for Pope but Burnley escape
ABERDEEN...1 BURNLEY....1
There can have been few more contentious choices for an england Test team than Adil rashid.
And, when he steps out against India at edgbaston on Wednesday, few england players will have felt under more scrutiny.
Welcome back to Test cricket, Adil. Just don’t expect all of Yorkshire to be cheering you on.
It ought to have been a day of celebration as national selector ed Smith carefully explained the logic behind returning to a legspinner who played the last of his 10 Tests more than a year-and-ahalf ago, and has since declined to play red-ball cricket for his county. Instead, things took a sour twist.
Yorkshire said they were ‘surprised’, which was code for downright ruddy flabbergasted. Smith insisted he had kept them up to date all along. There has been a breakdown in relations between club and player, and england must stay above the fray.
But whatever the sequence of events, it all means one thing: assuming rashid is chosen for the first Test against India, england could do with him taking a hatful of wickets — preferably reproducing the leg-break that stunned Virat Kohli during the third oneday international at headingley.
That would quieten a debate that has led to some impassioned — not to say fanciful — conclusions.
Chief among them is the idea that Smith has belittled the domestic game by choosing a player who turned his back on the County Championship. Yet when Smith met rashid before the recent one-day series against India to sound out his availability, he made it clear that if rashid wants to be considered for Tests beyond the winter tours of Sri Lanka and the West Indies, he will have to be playing four- day county cricket. It’s just that there seems little chance it will be for Yorkshire.
Smith has also taken the view that rashid’s falling out with his county is a private matter. he sees his job as selecting the best team, regardless of local feuds.
‘In no way is there any sense that I would do anything to damage county cricket,’ said Smith, citing in evidence the selection of the prolific essex seamer Jamie Porter in england’s 13-man squad.
And Smith strengthened his hand by describing rashid’s selection as ‘unanimous’. In other words, even the sceptical Joe root had understood the importance of playing a spinner who can beat the bat on both edges.
Smith can also point to his resurrection of Jos Buttler’s Test career, when many traditionalists were arguing that his lack of red-ball pedigree should have counted against him.
But there are questions to be asked as england reunite rashid and his close friend Moeen Ali as their frontline spinners. After all, when they last bowled together at Test level in December 2016, India scored 759 for seven at Chennai — the highest total england have ever conceded.
Then there is the concern that rashid will not be able to translate his compelling white-ball form into Test wickets. regarded by many as a confidence bowler, he can get away with more bad balls in limited- overs cricket because the fields are more defensive. A Test is less forgiving.
rashid himself sounded relaxed about the prospect. ‘ My role, hopefully, would be as it was for the ODIs and T20s,’ he told Sky Sports. ‘It will be exactly the same but with a red ball. It will be to come in and try to take wickets and create chances.’
Smith saluted rashid’s ‘form in white-ball cricket, his confidence, his touch, the fact that he has evolved so much as a bowler and is in the form of his life, and has never felt more at home in an england one- day or T20 jersey’. The new national selector is nothing less than rigorous.
Certainly, root will now have at his disposal a spin attack in which Ali turns it away from the lefthanders, and rashid away from the right-handers. If Somerset left-arm spinner Jack Leach also offers the latter option, then his lack of red-ball cricket in an injuryhit summer counted against him.
As for Leach’s county colleague Dominic Bess, who impressed on debut against Pakistan earlier in the summer, he could not play in the same side as fellow off-spinner Ali. Leach and Bess will train with the squad at edgbaston.
If england do play two spinners, the likeliest omissions are Dawid Malan and Porter, leaving the path clear for Surrey left-armer Sam Curran to build on his debut against Pakistan at headingley.
But there is no room for Chris Woakes, who was rushed back from injury last summer against West Indies and paid the price. he has been feeling his way back from quad and knee injuries, and the selectors don’t want to make the same mistake again.
With five Tests scheduled for six weeks, however, Woakes is bound to feature before the series is out.
The question on everyone’s lips, though, is whether rashid will last the course. If he does, Smith will have worked his alchemy once more. Who knows, even angry Yorkshiremen may doff their cap.