Captain Eoin Morgan has confirmed that none of England’s all-format players will be rested during the remainder of the one-day series against Windies.
After a long summer which has included the Champions Trophy and seven Test matches in nine weeks, England could have decided to rest the likes of Joe Root, Chris Woakes, Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow ahead of the Ashes series this winter. It would have also allowed them to look at the likes of Tom Curran and Jake Ball.
But following the washout of the second match of the five game ODI series at Trent Bridge on Thursday (September 21), Morgan confirmed that England would be looking to play their strongest team for the remaining three matches against Windies.
“We’re going to play our best team in this series,” he said. “We feel given they will have the whole of October off, we have planned for this pretty much since the lead-in to the Champions Trophy after which all them were rested for the South Africa T20 series barring Jonny Bairstow, who was playing for an opportunity more than anything else.
“All the guys have the month of October off and then obviously a long winter’s tour of Australia where at the back end of that there could be an opportunity in the T20 tri-series where potentially we can take a look at guys being rested.”
“We want to play the best team to win a particular game. One of the areas we struggled in the Champions Trophy was taking early wickets, particularly losing Chris Woakes in the first game. Also, a fully fit and firing David Willey, one of his strengths with the new ball is taking wickets and is something we can work on in this series,” Morgan noted.
Only 2.2 overs of play were possible in Nottingham before incessant rain set in and the game was abandoned at 4.15 PM local time. The wet weather subsequently abated which raised the possibility that the game had been prematurely ended although a lot of water had fallen and puddles had formed on the outfield.
Windies sweating on Gayle’s fitnessEngland picked the same team as at Old Trafford but Windies were forced in to a change with Chris Gayle missing after tweaking his hamstring in the warm-up to be replaced by Kyle Hope. They also picked seamer Miguel Cummins to replace leg-spinner Devendra Bishoo who conceded 48 runs from six overs in the first match.
Whether this was a fresh injury for Gayle or not is a moot point. It looked as if he had done something to his hamstring in the first game at Old Trafford while batting although he subsequently fielded in that match. Regardless, it must put his participation in the third match at Bristol on Sunday (September 24) in serious doubt.
Windies coach Stuart Law said: “He’s been for scans and we don’t know the results of those yet. He tweaked a hamstring in the warm-up just before the toss. We’ll monitor him and see how he’s going for Bristol. But if you do a hamstring at 38 it’s going to take longer than when you’re 18 so we’ll err on the side of caution. Fingers crossed he’ll be okay for the next three games.”
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