England’s Cricket World Cup squad is reassuring despite late changes

The workmen were at Lord’s on Tuesday, putting a fresh coat of glossy black paint on the North Gate and fixing up the whitewash around the back of the Allen stand, a last lot of spit and polish to get the old place ready for the start of the World Cup.

England’s selectors have been busy putting the finishing touches to their squad, too. They made three late changes, more than they might have expected given they have spent four years preparing for the tournament but it feels, all the same, like they got it about right in the end. There were no shock twists this time, no sudden changes. It was all reassuringly predictable.

“The sun’s out,” said the national selector, Ed Smith, as he stood outside the pavilion with a satisfied smile on his face. “It feels like a good omen for an exciting summer.”

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Picking James Vince was the simplest decision of the three. The absence of Alex Hales, Smith said, “wasn’t even mentioned” during his selection meeting with Trevor Bayliss and Eoin Morgan. Vince has been a shoo-in ever since he was called up to replace Hales at the end of April. But the switch still leaves the squad weaker than it would have been. Vince has made a single half-century in 16 limited-overs innings for England, 51 against Sri Lanka in 2016. They are still waiting for him to prove he can play anything like the kind of match-winning innings Hales often used to produce.

Vince’s only real competition as the reserve batsman was Joe Denly, who was, after all, the No 3 in their last Test match against West Indies. In one-day cricket, though, Denly has been bizarrely miscast as an all-rounder who could bat down the order and provide cover for England’s spinners, Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali, if either happens to get injured. Morgan never seemed quite convinced about this idea, and Denly bowled six overs in two matches in the recent series against Pakistan. Bayliss clearly was not sure either and made a point of talking up Dawson at the start of the series.

Dawson has played three one-day games for England and you could argue they would have been better off giving him a run against Pakistan instead of auditioning Denly again. Smith’s response is that Dawson has spent enough time with the squad in the past couple of years that he will be able slip back in easily enough.

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“It was a question of balance,” he said. “Do you tend towards the player who is a frontline batter and a handy bowler or the frontline bowler and a handy batter?” In the end, he said, the decision turned on the fact that Rashid has a niggling shoulder injury. It is not expected to stop Rashid from playing in the first game on 30 May, but the threat, however slight, was still enough to sharpen the selectors’ thinking. “In terms of how do you use those four back-up spots, it made sense to give one to someone whose main career has been as a spinner,” said Smith.

Dawson has, at least, been able to get a run of games for Hampshire in the Royal London Cup, where he has scored 274 runs at 45 and taken 18 wickets at 20. The county will miss him, and Vince, in the final against Somerset, with ICC declining a request from the ECB to break the tournament regulations and release them for domestic cricket.

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Then there was Jofra Archer, at once the easiest and the most difficult decision. Smith says the selectors already knew what Archer could do – “only now we’ve seen him do it in an England shirt too”– but you sense that his selection became inevitable during that rained-off game at the Oval, when Pakistan found his opening spell almost unplayable. The question then was not whether or not he should be picked, but who would be dropped to make room for him. David Willey lost. “It was a very difficult decision,” said Smith. “All of us were aware that there were more people who deserved selection than there were spots in the squad.”

Willey made his debut in the first game after that disastrous 2015 World Cup. England had gone into that tournament with a battery of right-arm medium-fast bowlers, and all the talk then was about how they needed a left-armer for variety. Four years, and 46 caps, later they have decided they can do without one.

A lot of the teams who have won this tournament have thought differently. Australia had Mitchell Starc and Mitchell Johnson in 2015, India had Zaheer Khan in 2011, Australia had Nathan Bracken four years before that. It feels like the one slight weakness in this England team. But then Willey has struggled to take wickets with the new ball lately and Smith explained that England have three men in the squad who can do that job for them. Willey took the news well. “He’s an outstanding man and he behaved exactly as you’d expect him to,” Smith said. “We’ve all seen how much this team all enjoy each other’s success.” On Twitter, Willey chipped in: “What can I say, I’m absolutely gutted, but still 100% behind the lads.”

England, then, found themselves in the rare position of being able to making three late changes to a winning team. They have come a long way in four years – now the hardest part is about to start.