England's star players are back in T20Is; Stokes rested

England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have announced a 16-man squad to take on Pakistan in the upcoming three-match T20I series. The T20I squad is an upgrade over the ODI side in terms of experience with skipper Eoin Morgan returning to lead the side. Similarly, Jason Roy, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow have also returned as England are ready to field a full-strength batting line-up against Pakistan. 

However, they will continue to miss Ben Stokes. The all-rounder led England's second-string squad to a 3-0 win over Pakistan in ODIs. England have retained only four players from that ODI squad - Dawid Malan, Matt Parkinson, Lewis Gregory and Saqib Mahmood. Malan is a part of England T20I setup anyways, given his number one spot in the T20I batting rankings for quite a while. Parkinson, Gregory and Mahmood have been rewarded for their excellent performance in the ODIs. Gregory put an all-round show while Mahmood was the Player of the Series. Parkinson, on the other hand, caught attention with a handful of eye-catching deliveries, the best one of which was his leg-break to clean bowled Imam Ul Haq in the third ODI at Edgbaston. 

Notable absentees from England's 3-0 T20I series win against Sri Lanka include Sam Curran, Mark Wood and Chris Woakes, all of whom, along with Stokes, might have been rested to stay fresh for the five-match Test series against India starting in the first week of August. 

The ECB confirmed that all the players have returned negative Cobid-19 tests which clears them to feature in the upcoming matches. The series begins at Trent Bridge on July 16 (Friday). 

Squad: Eoin Morgan (c), Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Jake Ball, Tom Banton, Jos Buttler, Tom Curran, Lewis Gregory, Chris Jordan, Liam Livingstone, Saqib Mahmood, Dawid Malan, Matt Parkinson, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, David Willey