LONDON: Head coach Trevor Bayliss has suggested that England may rest some of their star names for the one-day series against Pakistan in May, giving some of their fringe players another opportunity to stake their claims for a place in the World Cup squad.

England did similarly in the T20 series in the West Indies and were rewarded with a number of fine individual performances as claimed a 3-0 series whitewash.

With Jofra Archer set to come into contention, and not having featured in the ODIs, Chris Jordan and David Willey were among the players to push their case for World Cup inclusion in the three T20Is in the Caribbean and Bayliss admitted they had made the selectors’ decisions trickier.

“I think we’re getting fairly close to the final 15,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s going to make our job a little bit hard with some of the performances in this T20 series.

“By April 23 we’ve got to finalise our 15-member squad but we can change it until May 22 when Pakistan ODI series gets over.”

Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali were rested for the T20Is against the Windies and Bayliss implied that more big names could be left on the sidelines during the Pakistan games with Archer potentially among those who could come in.

“That’s a possibility, some of these guys (who played in the T20 series) might be the same,” he said. “It’s going to be a long summer, there are going to be a lot of games before the World Cup, a lot of games during the World Cup and then the Ashes, so we need back up guys.”

Jordan was player of the series as England whitewashed Windies in the T20Is. “Obviously, the World Cup is a 50-over competition but we’re going to have to have a good hard, long chat about that World Cup squad. We’ve got a one-dayer against Ireland and then five against Pakistan before we have to finalise that squad so there are some important games coming up.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2019