England have named their squads to face South Africa on their full white-ball tour and to visit Ireland to play three T20Is. Here are the main talking points from the announcement.
Bethell backed as captain but denied Championship chance
Jacob Bethell has had a strange year. He ended 2024 with his stocks through the ceiling, earning a deal with Royal Challengers Bengaluru and making three half-centuries in his maiden Test series in New Zealand. Since then, he has struggled for game time, been benched through most of the IPL and England’s Test series against India, and largely looked out of touch when he has played. There have been flashes of brilliance in England’s white-ball sides, but since the end of the West Indies tour in May he has batted 10 times in two months, with a high score of 20, including a torturous 11 off 46 across two innings in the fifth Test at The Oval.
Now, he’s set to become England’s youngest ever men’s captain, beating the mark set by Monty Bowden in the 1800s by over a year when he leads out his country in three T20Is against Ireland. It’s a weakened squad, with those present throughout the India Tests rested, but it’s still a marker of the esteem in which he is held.
However, is it the best thing for Bethell? There’s an Ashes series coming up this winter, and his presence in all three squads will keep him out of the entirety of September’s County Championship action. England’s designated backup batter will go into an epoch-defining series having played two red-ball games all year. If he is to be a professional centurion by that point, it will have to come in white-ball pyjamas.
Could Baker’s rise launch him into Ashes contention?
It’s an enduring truth of cricket: if you can bowl very quickly, your life can move very quickly. Sonny Baker is yet to reach 20 professional games in any format. Now he’s in line for a debut in ODIs and T20Is, and is being tipped as an Ashes bolter. Capable of topping 90mph, his collection of high profile victims includes Jonny Bairstow, James Vince and Jason Roy, while David Warner smiled with relief after surviving an early working-over that included a maiden in The Hundred. Baker’s County Championship debut came this season, but he had already played a first-class game for England Lions, taking 3-60 in the first innings.
“Sonny is a player we have identified for a while and he was impressive during the England Lions tours last winter,” England selector Luke Wright said. “He has carried that form into this season in white-ball cricket with Hampshire and Manchester Originals and deservedly gets his opportunity.” Whether this first opportunity leads to a Test selection remains to be seen.
Liam Livingstone excluded despite domestic resurgence
After Jos Buttler’s captaincy, Liam Livingstone was the most eye-catching casualty of England’s Champions Trophy debacle. He has fallen in and out of favour with the selectors since making his debut in 2017, with his six-hitting ability and canny off- and leg-spin set against a capacity for a brainfade dismissal at an inopportune moment. After a few too many entries in the latter category, Livingstone was left out of the first squads of the Harry Brook era, and his continued exclusion means that decision has the feeling of a full stop.
He could have done little more with the bat in domestic cricket since then, averaging 36.50 and striking at 176 as Lancashire topped the T20 Blast’s north group, and taking down Rashid Khan in an astonishing chase of 181 in The Hundred. He’s only 32, but perhaps we have seen the last of Livingstone in an England shirt.
England face Salt dilemma following paternity leave
Phil Salt’s ODI days might be done, but he remains one of the most in-demand T20 players in the world. He is building an IPL record up there with the very best, averaging 34 and striking at 176, and played a key role in RCB’s long awaited maiden title this season. His T20I numbers are not far off that extraordinary level, though they are skewed heavily towards his performances in the Caribbean, where he has played almost half his games, made all three of his hundreds and three of his five fifties. His most recent knock, 55 off 23 as England collapsed to 97 all out at the Wankhede, demonstrates he can do it outside of Barbados.
It’s a track record that should make him a shoo-in as England’s opener in the shortest format, but how exactly he fits back in is not clear. Salt missed their last series, at home against West Indies, on paternity leave, and there is no clear underperformer to make way. Jamie Smith opened, and signed off the tour with a rapid fifty, before demonstrating his supreme ball-striking with a century before lunch against India, having come in on a hat-trick ball. Tom Banton showed signs of acing the fiendishly difficult finisher’s role, and leaving him out would require a reshuffle. It’s an enviable headache to have, but it’s still a headache.
Welcome to the age of Rehan Ahmed
He’s got five County Championship hundreds. He’s pulling off all-round feats no Englishman has managed since Botham. He’s got a team who have never been promoted running away with it at the top of Division Two. And he’s doing it all with that grin firmly plastered in place. It’s a little under three years since Rehan Ahmed became England’s youngest ever player in each format, and all signs suggest he’s ready for a starring role. Named in all three September squads, he could form half of a mouthwatering leg-spin duo with Adil Rashid. That could be bad news for England’s other spin options, including Will Jacks, Liam Dawson and Tom Hartley. But Rehan might just be the present and the future.
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