Mark Stoneman has been dropped for the second Test against Pakistan, with Lancashire opener Keaton Jennings called up to replace him for Friday’s match at Headingley.
England’s nine-wicket defeat at Lord’s, their first loss in an opening Test of the summer in 23 years, was characterised by a number of batting failures. Stoneman, who returned scores of four and nine, is to be the fall guy as the hosts travel to Leeds, desperate to avoid a third consecutive series defeat.
That this is a two-match series may have forced the hand of the selection panel, who have often operated on a mantra that it is better to give a player one match too many. They do not often ring the changes with just one match to go in the series, but two years of inconsistency and the ongoing search for a long-term partner to Alastair Cook at the top of the order has forced their hand.
Jennings returns to the squad for the first time since August of last year, having made his debut in December 2016 against India. He got his opportunity that winter, in part, because of a bumper summer two years ago in which he scored 1,602 first class runs and seven hundreds, but also because of an injury to Haseeb Hameed and the poor form of Ben Duckett, who were the two openers in the squad for that tour to India.
Jennings notched a 112 in his first innings, at Mumbai, but returned a first-ball duck in the second. While he was able to score a half-century in the next Test, that was his lot for the rest of his time. He was dropped after six Tests and 12 innings with an average of 24.50.
Looking to regain his spot, he moved to Division One side Lancashire from Durham for the 2018 season and has averaged almost 44 in the County Championship this year from 314 runs, with two hundreds. Now in the 50-over portion of the summer for the Royal London One-Day Cup, Jennings has continued his form with 136, followed by a 73 and 69.
His cause will also have been helped by the presence of Andy Flower on the selection panel, in his new guise as interim director of cricket after Andrew Strauss stepped away from the role temporarily to be with his wife who is undergoing the second phase of cancer treatment. The panel met on Sunday after Pakistan’s victory, which took just 16.5 overs on day four to complete.
Flower, formerly national head coach, is a big fan of Jennings, handing him captaincy roles with the England Lions, as recently as the tour of West Indies earlier this year. Among the core of regular Lions players, they joke openly, by way of a compliment, that Jennings is Flower’s “golden child”.
England will hope Jennings’s issues of 2017 do not return, when he was tentative at the crease and turned inside-out by South Africa’s Vernon Philander. Mohammad Abbas, who bowls at Philander’s pace and, judging by his performance at Lord’s where he took four for 23 and four for 41, possesses many of the same high-quality skills, will look to test those same weaknesses. It was the dropping of Jennings last summer that gave Stoneman his chance. The revolving door analogy is almost too obvious to make.
National selector, Ed Smith, said: “Keaton Jennings showed a strong temperament in scoring a hundred on his Test match debut against India in December 2016. Keaton has found good form in county cricket this season, including three centuries in his last seven innings”
Stoneman can have few complaints: his 11 Tests have seen him average 27 with a top score of 60. He has never scored 100 runs in a match (across two innings). He looked devoid of confidence, as he has this season for Surrey since returning from a long winter.
One potential replacement was Nick Gubbins of Middlesex, who excelled during the winter’s North-South competition and has grown as an opener since driving his county’s 2016 Championship win. Injury earlier this summer halted his charge somewhat, but he was still able to return for the start of May and rattle of 107 and 99 in two Championship matches, before a run of 50, 23, 53, 86 and 14 in the 50-over competition.
England squad for second Test: Keaton Jennings, Alastair Cook, Joe Root (c), Dawid Malan, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow, Chris Woakes, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Dom Bess, Mark Wood
