Vince and Dawson miss out

James Vince’s T20 World Cup ambitions have been dealt a big blow.

The Hampshire batsman has been left out of the 16-man England squad chosen to tour South Africa next February.

That was despite playing in four of the five matches in England’s 3-2 series win in New Zealand last month.

Tom Banton, Sam Billings, Lewis Gregory and Saqib Mahmood also played in New Zealand but have been left out of the South African squad as Jos Buttler, Jofra Archer, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali and Jason Roy all return.

Vince might consider himself harshly done by; he was man of the match in the first T20 against New Zealand, top scoring with 59, his maiden T20 international halfcentury, and he was second top scorer with 49 in the third game.

In his other two innings, though, he only managed a single run in each.

Vince is the eighth highestscoring Englishman in history in terms of T20 cricket with 5,262 runs from 191 innings. For comparison purposes, that is 262 more runs than Roy has scored, and from three fewer innings.

The seven Englishmen who have scored more are Luke Wright (7,588), Ravi Bopara (6,733), Alex Hales (6,334), Eoin Morgan (6,185), Jos Buttler (5,708), Kevin Pietersen (5,695) and Owais Shah (5,509).

The 2020 T20 World Cup takes place in Australia next year and England will be aiming for their second win – 10 years after the first.

Neither Vince or Hampshire colleague Liam Dawson have made the 16-man squad for the ODIs in South Africa either.

Both men were members of last summer’s 15-man World Cup winning squad.

Vince played three group games when Roy was injured, but failed to take his chance - making 26 against Afghanistan, 16 against Sri Lanka and a second-ball duck against Australia.

Dawson won the last of his three ODI caps against Pakistan in October of last year.