England are set keep faith with Jos Buttler, despite defeat to the West Indies in the first Test of a three-match series, but time could be up for Joe Denly.
England captain Joe Root is set to return for the second Test starting tomorrow at Old Trafford in Manchester after missing the four-wicket defeat in Southampton to attend the birth of his second child.
The England selectors have big decisions to make after again losing a game with the bat rather than the ball.
Photo: AFP
An under-par 204 in the first innings and the loss of five wickets for 30 runs on the fourth evening set the platform for the tourists to take first blood.
Denly and Buttler were involved in both passages of play and find themselves increasingly under pressure for their places — the former being squeezed by Root’s return and Zak Crawley’s fine 76 on Saturday, the latter from Surrey wicketkeeper Ben Foakes.
However, England head coach Chris Silverwood only offered reassurance to one of the duo.
Buttler has a Test average of just 23.22 since the start of last year and only one century in 75 innings.
“I’m not gonna go down that road yet of putting Jos under pressure, because I don’t think it’s going to help him,” Silverwood said. “First and foremost we want to give Jos the best opportunity to succeed, but I’m sure he is asking the same questions. He looked brilliant coming into this game, in practice and everything, and he looked very good in the first innings. He just needs to go and make those big scores now doesn’t he? He knows that as well.”
However, there looks certain to be change higher up the order, with Denly’s knocks of 18 and 29 doing little to show that he can haul his performances up to the required standard for a long-term Test No. 3.
At just 22, Crawley is 12 years Denley’s junior and by producing England’s top score of the match in tense circumstances in the second innings he appeared to make an irresistible grab for the shirt.
“We’re all desperate to see Joe [Denly] do really well,” Silverwood said. “We can see he’s trying hard, he’s training hard and he’s a great bloke, hence why we all want to see him do well, but obviously he’s under pressure a little bit, yes. Zak is improving constantly. I think he certainly showed maturity and the innings he played was very good. We have some young players in that side that seem to have good heads on their shoulders and he’s one of them. That’s what we are looking for.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier