England have not included Jonny Bairstow in their Test tour of New Zealand. The squad for the two-Test series features four uncapped players, as announced on Monday (September 23).
Openers Zak Crawley (Kent) and Dom Sibley (Warwickshire) earn maiden call-ups, along with the Lancashire pair of fast bowler Saqib Mahmood and leg spinner Matt Parkinson. Surrey batsman Ollie Pope has also earned a recall.
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Sibley has been the standout batsman in the country, scoring 1,324 Division One runs this summer, with five hundreds and five fifties, a top score of 244 and sitting with an impressive average of 69.68. Crawley, 21, has shown great promise in all formats, with 820 runs and two centuries this year.
Mahmood and Parkinson took 21 and 19 wickets respectively in Division Two and are as much picked on promise as performance. Both are included in the Twenty20 squad for the five-match series which begins the tour on November 1 as part of an experimental 15 which sees a handful of “1st XI” players rested.
James Anderson continues to recover from a calf injury and will work towards proving his fitness for the tour of South Africa in December. Jason Roy, who missed the final Test, has also been dropped. With Bairstow absent, Jos Buttler will take the gloves.
The Yorkshire keeper-batsman averaged just 23.77 in the recent Ashes series in keeping with a downturn of form that has seen him hit just three hundreds in his last 56 innings (since the start of 2017). He does, however, make the T20 squad.
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The short-form regulars of Jos Buttler, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, Joe Root, Chris Woakes and Jofra Archer have been rested, with maiden call-ups for Tom Banton (Somerset, with 549 runs in this summer’s T20 Blast) Pat Brown (Worcestershire, 17 wickets in the T20 Blast), Mahmood and Parkinson. Sam Billings, Dawid Malan and James Vince are also included, with Eoin Morgan leading the white ball charges once more.
Adil Rashid, who was given a limited-overs contract by the ECB, is also included but Moeen Ali is not after it was decided he would take the New Zealand tour of to recover from what has been a taxing period of cricket for the off-spinning allrounder.
Squads
Test squad: Joe Root (c), Jofra Archer, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler (wk), Zak Crawley, Sam Curran, Joe Denly, Jack Leach, Saqib Mahmood, Matt Parkinson, Ollie Pope, Dominic Sibley, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes
T20I squad: Eoin Morgan (c), Jonny Bairstow (wk), Tom Banton, Sam Billings, Pat Brown, Sam Curran, Tom Curran, Denly, Lewis Gregory, Chris Jordan, Saqib Mahmood, Dawid Malan, Matt Parkinson, Adil Rashid, James Vince
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