England hints at playing two spinners at Old Trafford

England has added their aces in the pack James Anderson and ben Stokes along with leg-spinner Adil Rashid in the 14-member team for the upcoming Old Trafford Test, due to begin on Friday (June 22).

While the return of Anderson and Stokes was on expected lines, the loss in the first Test to Pakistan by a 75-run margin at Lord’s seems to have played triggered the thought of including Rashid. It is now anticipated that the hosts may play two spinners at Old Trafford.

Speaking after the selections for the second Test, Trevor Bayliss, the head coach, set matters straight regarding the selection of Rashid. “I’ve always thought of playing two spinners (at home) at some stage,” he said. “(Pakistan) have three left-arm pace bowlers, who created rough outside the off stump for Moeen. So looking ahead, if we did happen to have two spinners, they could both play an important part for us.”

Expressing disappointment over the way his batsmen handled Yasir Shah, Bayliss asked his batsmen to tighten their technique against the newly rated No. 1 Test bowler in the International Cricket Council (ICC) Test rankings. “Our batters have to play their (Pakistan) spin a lot better. Especially in the first innings, I felt we gifted him a few wickets with shots I’m sure the boys would like to replay,” he noted.

Also, read – Patience will be the key as a batting unit: Ajinkya Rahane

England’s middle-order fallacy was the team’s undoing at Lord’s and James Vince, the Hampshire batsman, has come under immense pressure with experts asking the batsman to be dropped for the next Test. However, the head coach expressed confidence in Vince’s abilities and backed him to deliver. “Most of the innings he’s played, I think he has looked very good while he has been there. Personally, I think it would be an injustice if he doesn’t make it,” Bayliss said.

“In the end, it will be the number of runs that determines his longevity in the team. I’m sure he is starting to feel the pressure. He’d like to be scoring more runs. Ask anyone who has been in that situation, it is a difficult thing to go out and play your natural game. He has some work to do. If you think they are good enough and they believe they are, a lot of times they will come good. That’s not 100 percent of the time … but I like to think that (Vince) will play more cricket for England.”

Bayliss reckoned that the team needed to go back to basics and work out modules which will help them in future. “We’ve all got work to do. I don’t think we move all that great from left to right, from side to side. We’ve got to make sure we take our head to the ball not just throw out an arm with our head back two or three feet from the ball. We’ve got to get our head close to the ball. We seem just to throw out a hand at it without moving our feet,” he concluded.