The UK Babe Channels Forum

England Squad Stokes ©
Duckett
Crawley
Root
Pope
Brook
Bairstow
Foakes
Robinson
Hartley
Wood
Ahmed
Bashir
Atkinson
Anderson
Leach

1st Test Hyderabad Jan 25-29
2nd Test Visakhapatnam Feb 2-6
3rd Test Rajkot Feb 15-19
4th Test Ranchi Feb 23-27
5th Test Dharamsala Mar 7-11

In the words of the legendary Murray Walker albeit in a slightly different context..........

SPIN SPIN SPIN

If they see fit India can beat England with both spin & pace. Bumrah & Shami are both high class. They can prepare wickets for pace & spin these days. But look at England's options, Leach is a steady performer, but beyond that Ahmed has one Test cap & just 24 wickets from 13 First Class matches. Hartley has 40 wickets from 20, Bashir 10 wickets from 6 matches. Leach has to manage a health issue which could see him miss a game at any point.
Dawson was the best bet after a good season, but he may well of turned down a tour spot in favour of lucrative T20 contract. He would have more than likely just been a none playing back-up.

India Squad (1st 2 Tests)
Rohit Sharma c)
Shubman Gill
Yashasvi Jaiswal
Virat Kohli
Shreyas Iyer
K L Rahul
K S Bharat (w)
Dhruv Jurel (w)
R Ashwin
Ravindra Jadeja
Axar Patel
Kuldeep Yadev
Jasprit Bumrah (vc)
Mohammad Siraj
Mukesh Kumar
Avesh Khan

they can pretty much bat all the way down that line up

Harry Brook has withdrawn from the tour due to personal reasons, he is set to miss the entire series & a replacement is being discussed.

^ Dan Lawrence has been called up to the squad.

Kudos to TNT for saving the day (and the next 5 years with indian rights) Sky have forfeited the right to bang on any more about the preeminence of test cricket!. Particularly having 'invested' (thrown away) money in the rights of the SA20

Tough ask for England here I think! Not sure the squad is balanced for the hard slog of a 5 - match tour here

^^ I don't know what is behind the strategy of Sky & cricket coverage, it could purely be a case of being out-bid by TNT, they have already lost the Ashes in Australia to BT. Sky had a monopoly for many years with Test Cricket, home & away, competition is healthy & only fair that it get shared out. They may have lost the India overseas Tests & filled the void with the SAT20.