With England’s Check tour of Pakistan solely ending on Saturday, it meant quite a few key gamers weren’t thought-about for this Caribbean tour, comprising three ODIs and 5 T20s.
Harry Brook, Brydon Carse and Gus Atkinson are among the many gamers skipping this sequence earlier than the pre-Christmas Check tour of New Zealand.
In the meantime common captain Jos Buttler was compelled to overlook out with a calf damage, whereas veterans resembling Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and Mark Wooden haven’t featured since final autumn’s World Cup.
It meant England fielded an inexperienced line-up in Antigua, together with 4 debutants in Turner, Cox, and all-rounders Dan Mousley and Jamie Overton.
Certainly spinner Adil Rashid outnumbered the caps of the remainder of the line-up put collectively, with 140 to 127.
Moreover, a few of England’s debutants lacked expertise of 50-over cricket, with Cox and Mousley taking part in their first Listing A video games in 20 months and three years respectively.
It has arguably left them unprepared for the challenges of the longer white-ball format, with former England captain Sir Alastair Prepare dinner noting on TNT Sports activities “there is not any expertise of understanding totally different conditions, for whenever you’re thrown into worldwide cricket beneath elevated scrutiny”.
Even these with higher expertise, such because the 30-year-old Overton, appeared rusty, because the Surrey participant was dismissed lbw for a first-ball duck by Motie.
With so many absentees and quite a few debutants jammed between Check excursions, the sequence has the air of an afterthought.
However that is the ninth of solely 14 ODIs scheduled between the World Cup and February’s Champions Trophy – England should emerge from the sequence with invaluable expertise or they might face one other embarrassing worldwide event exit.
