England’s squad selection leaves Nasser Hussain surprised

Apr 6, 2019 at 2:17 PM

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England’s squad selection leaves Nasser Hussain surprised

Former England skipper Nasser Hussain has expressed his surprise over England’s squad selection for the first Test against Pakistan.

“It’s a bit of a surprise selection,” said Hussain in an interview with Sky Sports.

In-form English batsman Jos Buttler was tipped to replace Nick Compton in the team. However, the selectors surprised everyone by including Gary Ballance in the squad. The inclusion of  Toby Roland-Jones has also left many baffled.

“Not many people were talking about Ballance this summer and Roland-Jones, to be honest, I haven’t seen a lot of in red-ball cricket, so it is difficult to judge.
“It’s in no way a dreadful selection, but I would have gone differently, I have said that all along. Buttler is too good a talent to have just carried the drinks or out playing in county cricket.

Ballance has not played international cricket since the 2015 Ashes series but is making a comeback despite averaging only 33.64 in the County Championship this season.
Ballance made his Test debut in 2014 and made four centuries in his first nine matches.

But a string of poor performances, later on, led to him being dropped after the Lord’s Test against Australia last summer.

Talking about Buttler, Hussain said that the wicketkeeper-batsman need to score a lot of runs to make a comeback to the Test cricket.

“Buttler hasn’t played a lot of red-ball cricket since he was left out of the Test team, and the selectors obviously wanted to go for someone who has. Jos now needs to score a stack of runs for Lancashire, although it looks like he might be injured for a while.

Commenting on the squad selection, the cricketer turned commentator said that Ballance’s inclusion is an indication that the English selectors are not trying to experiment too much with the squad and want to keep the core of the team intact.

“The selectors are showing a bit of continuity by picking Ballance. He was the reserve batsman in the squad in South Africa, plus he scored a very timely hundred for Yorkshire against a decent Middlesex bowling attack last week.

“Andrew Strauss and Angus Fraser were there watching that, while Fraser also will have watched Roland-Jones week in, week out, for Middlesex and has obviously seen something in him.

Ballance was severely criticised for his technique which involves a big movement back towards his stumps as the bowler releases the ball and as a result, he became susceptible to full-length deliveries. Hussain said that if Ballance wants to excel in international cricket he will have to sort those issues out.

“But there is no hiding place in international cricket, and the last time we saw him he had a bit of a problem against left-armers, and against the very full and very short ball.
“He will need to have ironed out those issues, because one thing is for certain, Pakistan will go at him with the short stuff and the fuller delivery. Plus, they have very good left-armers in their attack, particularly Mohammad Amir.

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