The announcement last month that the squad selected for England’s one-day international series against New Zealand would also be the group travelling to India for the World Cup brought a measure of controversy and certainty. Communication at the time was crystal clear, with Luke Wright, the former England and Sussex all-rounder who was appointed as selector last November, saying: “This is the squad we’re going to put forward … Although it isn’t actually locked in officially until 28 September, this is the squad we’re going for.”
On Tuesday Matthew Mott, England’s white-ball coach, was playing a very different tune. He insisted: “We’ve always said it’s a provisional squad,” and that, far from being locked in, those picked for the New Zealand series had simply “got the first crack at it” in the knowledge “that there is someone ready to take their place if they don’t perform”.
Mott has made very few mistakes across the last few years, in which time he has coached Australia’s women and England’s men to a total of four World Cup wins, but this was a slight miscalculation. “It’s the media’s job to create speculation and it’s our job to put a lid on it and I think we are doing that,” he said, while dousing the speculation with petrol and calmly lighting a match.
For several weeks the impression has been of a group of players engaged in a game of musical chairs with a somewhat predictable conclusion: silence will fall, the dust will settle, and Harry Brook will be sitting down. The question has been which unfortunate player, having been led to believe their place in the squad was guaranteed, will be standing up at the time?
Having nailed down a spot in the Test side and been a part of England’s victorious T20 World Cup squad in Australia last year, Brook’s omission from the original selection was a surprise. When he scored 215 for once out in his next three innings, one in the Hundred and two in international T20s, it became difficult to justify. And on Wednesday the dance moved a step towards its apparently preordained conclusion when Brook was added to the squad for the ODIs against New Zealand.
With the seamer Brydon Carse having also joined the group it now numbers 17, two more than can be on the list submitted to the ICC in three weeks’ time. With three reserves also travelling they could all be on the plane to India, but nobody’s ambition is to be at the World Cup only as a back-up. Suddenly there will be nervous glances in the dressing room. Several batters will feel their position is insecure, but given the possibility that a place for Brook could be created by nudging aside a seamer – or that Carse will perform well enough to elbow his way into the final 15 – the uncertainty will not end there.
David Willey, who was cut from the squad in 2019 as a result of the irresistible rise of Jofra Archer, must have a depressingly familiar knot in his stomach. “I wasn’t under any illusions, obviously he was going to come in and someone was going to miss out,” he said of that decision. “I hadn’t been playing regularly, so I knew I was in the one or two lads it was going to be.” Willey has played in four of England’s nine ODIs in the last 12 months, and could be on the dreaded shortlist again.
Uncertainty is not necessarily a problem: England went into the 2019 tournament having just dropped Alex Hales and promoted Archer and won it anyway. But there is also a benefit to consistency of selection. Jonny Bairstow, one of nine veterans of that 2019 team in the New Zealand squad, said on Wednesday that this familiarity has a beneficial impact each time the group reassembles. “I don’t think there’s too much worry about cohesion, or people not having played together for six months, 12 months, whatever it may be,” he said. “I don’t think that’s too much of a worry when the group has played together for, what, seven or eight years? It’s one of those where you just slot back into your roles.”
There is also the strength these players get from their collective memory, and their hunger to taste once again the success they enjoyed four years ago. “I think we’ll be able to call upon some tough experiences we had during that competition,” Bairstow said. “It wasn’t just plain sailing, having to win four out of the last four games to win the competition. We’ll be able to call on those experiences in the big moments in the big games during the World Cup. And everyone wants to go back-to-back. Everyone does. It’s something you dream of.”
There will be a variety of dreams powering England’s players through the final weeks of World Cup preparations – and also a few nightmares.
