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After being chosen to play for England against India at Old Trafford on Wednesday, spinner Liam Dawson will play his first Test match in eight years.
Shoaib Bashir, who had a broken finger in the thrilling third-test victory at Lord’s, is replaced by left-armer Dawson, 35.
Chris Woakes, a pace bowler, fends off Gus Atkinson’s challenge.
If England hosts England in their fourth Test in Manchester, they will win the series, going into it with a win. Since 2018, they haven’t won a five-test series.
Dawson will win his third Test cap against South Africa in July 2017 and his fourth overall.
Since Dawson last appeared in a Test match, England has played 102. In all time, only six players have played more Tests between caps.
While Dawson will provide dependable slow left-arm, lower-order batting for England is also improved. Zak Crawley leads with his 35.29 average, which he owns on average with his first-class collection of 18 first-class hundreds.
His international career appeared to be over, playing for the 2019 World Cup squad. He went more than three years without receiving another call-up after making a few liminal white-ball appearances in 2022.
He claimed at the start of the summer that he was “realistic” about his chances in England, only to be called back in May for the T20 series against West Indies.
He will now face off against fellow left-armer Jack Leach, who was a member of England’s squads during the winter and has a key contract.
He brings both skill and guile, batter Harry Brook told BBC Sport. He is “very skilled.”
He has played hundreds of games, been on the block, and is a fantastic bloke. He is a very good player and very competitive.
Woakes struggled to make an impact in his first three Test matches, but he did succeed at Lord’s by taking four wickets.
He receives the nod in favor of Atkinson in part because of this ground’s reputation. In Manchester, the 36-year-old bats almost 37 times and shoots 17 times.
Atkinson took a Monday fitness test at Old Trafford. Since suffering a hamstring injury in the one-off Test against Zimbabwe in May, he hasn’t played professionally.
Given the other options in the squad and the fact that Atkinson has only played one game of club cricket in the past two months, England was unable to take a risk. However, he was determined fit enough to make a Test comeback if necessary.
England will now look to him for games, but he won’t be playing in the Surrey squad for the County Championship against Yorkshire starting on Tuesday.
The only chance that Mark Wood, who also has knee surgery, will make a fifth Test appearance is now over. Instead, Wood is focusing on the summer’s end white-ball games against South Africa.
After Nitish Kumar Reddy, an all-rounder, was ruled out of the rest of the series due to a knee injury, India will make at least one change to the team that lost at Lord’s.
Rishabh Pant, the wicketkeeper, appeared to have recovered from the finger injury that prevented him from playing in the third Test.
Jasprit Bumrah has not yet been decided. The world’s best pace bowler has featured in two of the five Tests, despite having only three scheduled appearances.
The tourists must be tempted to unleash Bumrah in the third and fourth Tests to maintain the series alive after a week of rest between the third and fourth.
In addition to their nine previous Test victories in Manchester, India has never failed to win.
related subjects
- England Men’s Cricket Team
- India
- Cricket
Source: BBC
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