England head into the first Test against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford starting Wednesday with several players given a chance to prove a point after captain Ben Stokes’s series-ending injury.
Star all-rounder Stokes is set to play no part at all in the three-match contest after tearing his hamstring during the Hundred.
And that means England will be without their inspirational leader for the first time since Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum launched the team’s dynamic ‘Bazball’ era two years ago.
Ollie Pope, the England vice-captain, will now skipper the side even though he has led county team Surrey in just one first-class match.
England announced their team on Monday, with fast bowler Matthew Potts recalled as they opted for a five-man attack.
Meanwhile, Dan Lawrence — rarely deployed as an opener in county cricket — returns to the England side for the first time in two-and-a-half years after Zak Crawley’s fractured finger created a vacancy at the top of the order.
Crawley suffered his setback as England completed a 3-0 whitewash of the West Indies last month.
England will be expected to achieve a similar result against a Sri Lanka side who, like the West Indies, have played just a solitary warm-up match prior to the first Test.
Conventional cricket wisdom has rarely been a part of England’s approach under the guidance of former New Zealand captain McCullum, so it should come as no surprise they have opted against replacing Crawley with a specialist opener.
Indeed Lawrence himself is in no doubt his natural attacking game is well-suited to the approach of the current England set-up.
“I think that’s the style of cricketer that Baz McCullum and Ben Stokes are generally after and my general way of going about it is to try and be quite aggressive,” Lawrence said Monday.
“Throughout my whole career I’ve played a certain brand of cricket and that has served me well so I’m just going to do the same thing. I’m just going to go out there and try to be as free as possible.”
– Experience –
Sri Lanka can no longer call on star batsmen Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, but their squad does contain experienced performers in Angelo Mathews and Dimuth Karunaratne.
Dhananjaya de Silva’s side will, however, be able to turn to another Sri Lanka great in Sanath Jayasuriya, the squad’s interim coach, who took over after Chris Silverwood, the ex-England paceman, opted against renewing his contract in June.
And former England batsman Ian Bell, also a member of the backroom staff, is on hand to provide local knowledge for what is Sri Lanka’s first series on English soil in eight years.
Sri Lanka last played Test cricket in April but they do have recent experience of upsetting the odds after defeating India 2-0 in a three-match one-day international series earlier this month.
“We have an experienced batting order,” Jayasuriya, a dynamic batsman who pulverised England attacks in all formats, told ESPNCricinfo.
“Dimuth Karunaratne, Kusal Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dhananjaya de Silva, Dinesh Chandimal — they have all played a lot of cricket.”
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s first Test in England, a match where Sidath Wettimuny made a superb 190 — one of several hundreds for the tourists — in a highly creditable draw at Lord’s.
And Jayasuriya believes the timing of the current campaign could favour Sri Lanka.
“The fact that we have got a late-summer tour is great,” he said. “It’s more similar to our conditions than the early summer tours.”
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