England should have gambled on seamer James Anderson’s fitness and included him in the squad for the first Test against Pakistan at Lord’s Cricket Ground, paceman Stuart Broad has said.
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Anderson, 33, has not recovered from a right shoulder injury sustained in the third Test against Sri Lanka last month – a three-match series England won 2-0.
In his absence, Toby Roland-Jones or Jake Ball will make a Test debut at Lord’s.
Pakistan will play a four-match Test series and a five-match ODI series against England, starting from July 14 at Lord’s.
“At this stage, we don’t know whether he will be fit for the Test, but he may be ok”.
“I’ve felt good the last few weeks”, Ballance added. ‘I’ve not faced him before and I’m looking forward to that challenge and seeing how I go against him in this series. He scored 132 for Yorkshire against Middlesex at Scarborough earlier this week.
His performances, though, have been monitored by selectors for a while, and he spent time in the winter with the England Lions – but he did not automatically assume a Test call would follow. “We will make sure that we get both Cook and Root out so that we can put the pressure on the middle order”.
“The great thing about having pace and spin working together is that it does not matter so much what the pitch is doing, or whether you win the toss”.
Sep 02: The three Pakistan players are provisionally suspended by the International Cricket Council. I remember taking a catch at mid-on and I just threw the ball back to Graeme Swann, who was bowling.
Pakistan briefly rose to No. 2 in the ICC Test rankings – they are now third, a place above England – after beating England 2-0 in the UAE a year ago and Wahab pointed to Misbah-ul-Haq, who stepped up to replace Salman Butt as captain after the 2010 spot-fixing crisis and oversee the rebuilding of the team, as the main reason for their recent success.
All eyes on Thursday will be on the Pakistani fast bowler Amir who is returning to the scene of his crime where, six years ago, he took money to bowl no balls in what was revealed to be a newspaper sting.
Amir made his worldwide comeback earlier this year in New Zealand and was subjected to loud boos by the crowd.
The brilliant left-armer is back at the age of 24, and all the evidence against Somerset in Pakistan’s tour opener last week was that he still has the potential to be a world-beater. “And as a bowling unit we’ve got Mohammad Amir back and we have the likes of Sohail Khan who I think will be very effective here as well”.
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Pakistan’s brilliant left-armer may still be in the headlines too, when the four-Test Investec series returns to London for its culmination at The Oval in mid-August.
