Wednesday 11 December 2013

Ashes Squad Insta-Reaction

The England selectors have whittled-down the 21-gun 'Performance Squad' to 16* "seats on the plane" for The Women's Ashes in Australia.
  • Tammy Beaumont
  • Arran Brindle
  • Katherine Brunt
  • Katie Cross*
  • Charlotte Edwards
  • Georgia Elwiss
  • Natasha Farrant*
  • Lydia Greenway
  • Rebecca Grundy
  • Jenny Gunn
  • Danielle Hazell
  • Amy Jones
  • Heather Knight
  • Beth Langston
  • Laura Marsh
  • Natalie Sciver
  • Anya Shrubsole
  • Sarah Taylor
  • Fran Wilson
  • Lauren Winfield
  • Danielle Wyatt
* There are actually two 15-man squads - Cross will be replaced by Farrant for the T20s.

The big surprise for me is the inclusion of Amy Jones at the expense of Tammy Beaumont. I can only imagine this came down to a 'lesser of two evils' decision - the selectors obviously have little confidence in Jones' batting, as witnessed during the Tri-Series; but even less in Beaumont's keeping - so Jones gets the nod.

The rest of the batting then more or less picks itself; and as long as the first-choice top-of-the-order (Edwards, Knight and Taylor) stay fit, England will feel pretty confident that they can put runs on the board.

In the Seam & Swing department, the big question was whether to gamble on Georgia Elwiss, who hasn't played international cricket for the best part of a year, since the World Cup in India; but this is indeed what the selectors have done. The dilemma then was who to drop - Cross or Farrant; but in the end, the selectors have gone for a cunning work-around which hopefully leaves nobody too disappointed.

Turning finally to the spinners, with Laura Marsh injured and Holly Colvin unavailable, England will be hoping that Danni Wyatt will be fit to send down a few overs, because otherwise their spin options are limited to Dani Hazell and... er... Dani Hazell. (Although it does have to be said that if you were going to pick just one spinner, it would probably be Hazell anyway after her brilliant summer, so I'm not too worried there!)

3 comments:

  1. Which current England player has the highest ODI batting average. Answer : Amy Jones.
    England have played 14 ODIs since Jones scored 41 in her one and only ODI and she has not been picked in any of them.
    Beaumont has had 15 ODI innings and only once scored over 40 (that being 44).
    Perhaps they tossed a coin ?

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  2. Yer - Martin (@wmnscricketblog) made the point that Tam-Beau has had her share of chances and never really taken them.

    Worth adding that I have NOTHING against Amy-J - quite the opposite actually - I think she was treated pretty shabbily in the WI.

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  3. Oops, apologies to Beaumont. I omitted to contextualise the raw statistics by pointing that her ODI batting positions have been 7xNo2, 2xNo5, 1xNo6, 1xNo8, 3xNo10 and 1xNo11 so in some of those innings a big score might have been difficult (not least the No11 where she didn't face a ball !).
    Whilst batting at No2 she has scored 139 runs off 340 balls at avg of 19.85. ODI overall is 207 runs off 489 balls at avg of 18.81.

    A completely different line on your 'Jones/Beaumont' might be that it was Winfield v Beaumont and Winfield won .... or even a 'Winfield/Jones/Beaumont pick 2 from 3' debate. After all they are all wicketkeeper/batsmen. Oh to be a fly on the wall of the selectors' room.

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