NEWS
Follow UsEngland's right-arm paceman Ollie Robinson has been ruled out of their first Test against West Indies, starting on Tuesday (March 8) in Antigua, due to a back spasm. Robinson pulled up midway through an over during a warm-up match against a Cricket West Indies President's XI and was unable to take part in training on Sunday.
England were already unlikely to gamble on the 28-year-old's fitness but the incident settled the issue, allowing uncapped Saqib Mahmood to take his spot in a 12-man group. The tourists must now decide whether to hand the Lancashire quick his Test debut on Tuesday in an all-seam attack or opt for the variety of Jack Leach's left-arm spin.
Mark Wood, Chris Woakes and Craig Overton are likely to fill the other seam berths after record wicket-takers James Anderson and Stuart Broad were controversially dropped for the tour.
"Robinson has had a great start to his Test career so naturally he'll be a big miss. At the same time, it gives people opportunities. This tour is not just solely about opportunities, we're trying to win games of cricket, but at the same time it does give that chance to someone to potentially make their Test debut or who's been waiting in the wings for quite a while, and show that they can do it at this level," ESPNcricinfo quoted Chris Woakes as saying.
England were hammered in Australia and Woakes himself had a horrible series, averaging 55.33 with the ball. Overall, the right-arm seamer has an average of 22.63 at home, but 52.38 in away Tests. The 33-year-old feels he is lucky that he wasn't dropped from the squad after such a poor series.
"Yeah, definitely. Pretty much everyone would have been bar maybe a few. It would have been silly not to. I'm delighted to be here, to be backed and have another opportunity to have a crack at it. I'd have liked Australia to go better but obviously it didn't.
"It's clear my away record isn't as good as my home record, but I don't prepare in any different way. I look at conditions and try to figure out how best to perform on any given surface. I've never played a Test in the Caribbean so I'm excited about the challenge of that. It is a Dukes ball here so I'm hoping it might suit me a little better."
England have won only one Test series in West Indies since 1968 and Woakes knows England might find difficult to topple Kraigg Brathwaite and Co. "By no means is this going to be an easy Test series for us. We haven't won a lot of Test matches here in the last 50 or 60 years from what I've heard so it's not by any means going to be a walkover.
"I think it's more of a mindset, really. In Australia, we maybe got into a place where people were thinking more internally, thinking on personal levels rather than thinking fully about the bigger picture and about how to win games of cricket as a team."
England's 12-man squad for the first Test - Joe Root (capt), Jonny Bairstow, Zak Crawley, Ben Foakes (wk), Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Alex Lees, Saqib Mahmood, Craig Overton, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood.
(With inputs from AFP)
