So this is Buttler and McCullum’s England first team – more wicketkeepers than bowling options

3 minute read

In these multi-format days of infernal rotation, you don’t often get a good, clear look at a country’s various first teams. But with just three group stage games in the Champions Trophy and an incentive to win at least a couple of them, England have given us a sighter of their first XI in one of Jos Buttler’s favourites formats by naming their team early. It features three wicketkeepers and not quite enough bowlers.

The headline news is that Jamie Smith is at number three. This gives a sense of just how often we see the first team, because Smith has never before batted in that position for England. (The fact he has only batted at three once in his entire 50-over career is however not so surprising given that the best county players don’t actually play the format any more.)

Smith will also relieve Phil Salt of the gloves, after Salt previously relieved Buttler of the gloves. What are these gloves? Why does their absence bring such relief?

That leaves us with this…

We aren’t going to quibble with Smith’s inclusion. He is a bit of an unknown quantity in the format, having not yet made a fifty, but he is also a man with a track record of perfectly fulfilling his brief, so why not continue asking him to do new things?

We also quite like Buttler’s demotion to number six. We honestly believe the less time Buttler has to bat, the better he plays. He is the greatest late overs one-day batter England have ever had and we feel like in this instance willingness to take on ‘responsibility’ only really diminishes his genius.

We can’t help but notice they’re going with the two-parts Liam Livingstone to one part Joe Root chimera as a fifth bowler though. The problem here is that neither of those ingredients would pass as a frontline bowler and yet together they will be asked to fulfil that role.

Livingstone has 22 wickets in 36 one-day internationals (ODIs) at 40.13 and has conceded just over a run a ball. The low number of wickets is excused by the fact he has only bowled, on average, four overs per game. The economy rate could however presumably be even worse if captains hadn’t generally had the option of hauling him out of the attack.

In this team, when that happens, Root (28 wickets at 45.36 in 174 ODIs at just under a run a ball) will come on. And if he gets wellied, Buttler’s looking at, um, Harry Brook… (We dearly hope Brook gets to do some bowling.)

There is no-one else because everyone else is either a wicketkeeper or Ben Duckett. (Here is Ben Duckett’s first wicket as a professional cricketer. Here is his only other one. If there is one thing we want to see more than Harry Brook bowling in a one-day international, it is Ben Duckett bowling in a one-day international.)

Buttler’s main decision in the field therefore becomes how exactly he shares out the 10 overs between Livingstone and Root. If he’s looking for other ‘options’, we suppose he could always rotate his wicketkeepers.

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