Panic and Carry On

England's ragged selection choices

A Batting Crisis

England have just let a good crisis go to waste. Ollie Pope’s dislocated shoulder was the perfect opportunity to note that everything had changed and that selection mistakes already made could be cancelled. Instead, they have panicked and carried on. Dan Lawrence will play at Leeds.

The first thought is that, if Lawrence is to play, he should indeed bat down the order. A top three which includes Crawley and Lawrence is asking for trouble. It is time Joe Root volunteered to take one place higher for the team. Brook and Stokes can shuffle up one and Lawrence can come in at six. That does rather make on wonder, though, whether there isn’t a more obvious rectification to be made. Ben Foakes is a better batsman than Lawrence anyway, quite apart from his skill behind the stumps (see the item below for why this alone is really starting to count). But they won’t do that. They want someone at 7 who is so intent on getting on with the game that he walks off before it’s over.

That’s not the end of the matter, though. Leave aside the Foakes question. Is Dan Lawrence really the next best batsman available to England? Surely he isn’t. It’s not obvious he should even make the second XI in front of Bohannon, Hain, Vince and Livingstone. It is a very reliable rule of thumb that a batsman who averages 46 over a long spell is better than a batsman who averages 36. Dan Lawrence has 6050 first class runs at a respectable 36.66. Leus du Plooy, the captain of Derbyshire, a South African who is eligible for selection for England, has 6186 first-class runs at 46.86. Du Plooy is the best uncapped player in the country and he is, all the evidence suggests, very much a superior player to Dan Lawrence.  Yet he never rates a mention.

A Keeper

Jonny Bairstow has been involved in a wicket-keeping scandal so contentious that we have missed the real one. Bairstow’s missed stumping of Cameron Green cost a crucial 38 runs and he has dropped a couple of takeable catches too. His general keeping has been untidy but it has also been costly. So far, in two Tests, Bairstow has conceded 31 byes. Alex Carey has conceded 9 for Australia, all of which ought to have been given as wides. As Andy Zaltzman points out in this piece, England have scored more runs with the bat than Australia so far. They are losing on extras.

Ashes 2023: Andy Zaltzman on why England's profligacy is costing them - BBC Sport

How To Use Mooen

England use Moeen Ali very badly. His selection was a mistake – Liam Dawson should be playing – but now that he is here let’s at least give him his best chance. We have noted before here that Moeen should only bowl in the second innings. That means he is a sixth bowler, rather than a fifth and this is, in fact, possible because it does Mooen no favours at all to bat down the order.

In 7 matches at number 4 or 5 (which is where he has spent most of his county career) Moeen averages 39 for England. In 22 matches at number 8 he averages just 26. When Mooen comes in at number 8 he plays accordingly, turning from an elegant player into a park slogger. The same decay set in for Ben Stokes when he was pushed too far down the order. Stokes averages 38 at 5 and 6 and 21 lower down. It is therefore less of a source of reassurance to have Moeen at 8 than it looks. You don’t get top-order Moeen when he bats in the lower order.

Moeen has a first class batting average which is all but identical to that of Dan Lawrence. He is a (not quite good enough) batsman who has been unaccountably regarded as a (definitely not good enough) bowler. If he were to bat at 4 and bowl sixth we would at least see the best Moeen Ali there is to see.

Go Again, Jimmy

Michael wrote a short elegy for the decline of Jimmy Anderson after the old thoroughbred looked spent at Lord’s. In his Telegraph column, Anderson himself pleased that his poor performance so far should not be attributed to his advancing years. Maybe he is right. Maybe he ought to have played in Leeds rather than at Lord’s. Maybe England are just about to drop him for the game he really ought to have played. He shouldn’t be almanacked just yet. Let him have at least one more run.