England Twenty20 squad for Stanford Super Series
Friday, September 05, 2008 : England, Stanford Files, Twenty20
The 13-man squad to compete in the Stanford Super Series in Antigua on November 1 (Full schedule), will be announced next week. But what experience have the England Selectors got in Twenty20? Not much. Ashley Giles played 2 matches in 2004 for Warwickshire. Will this be reflected in the squad? Yes. Will it be the 50 over format team without any Twenty20 specialists? Pretty much.
My guess is:
Bell, Prior, Shah, Pietersen, Flintoff, Collingwood, Wright, Patel, Broad, Anderson, S Harmison with Swann and Bopara.
England played the same 11 in all of the 5 ODIs against South Africa with the forced exception of Bopara for Collingwood in the first. In England's last Twenty20 match against New Zealand, a game which they won easily, the team was Wright, Bell, Pietersen, Bopara, Collingwood, Shah, Mascarenhas, Ambrose, Swann, Broad, Anderson. Ambrose has probably lost his place in all 3 forms of the game now that Prior has performed well with bat and gloves in the ODIs. Steve Harmison coming back means that one of either Mascarenhas, Swann and Bopara will miss out. I think it will be Mascarenhas.
I'm hoping that England will take on board some of the lessons from domestic Twenty20 cricket, i.e. play 2 spinners and have a flexible batting order. Having said all that I must confess I haven't checked Darren Pattinson's Twenty20 stats! You never know.
William Hill odds on the match.
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