Ansari to make Test debut

27 Oct 2016 | Cricket
Zafar Ansari will make his Test debut after Alastair Cook confirmed his England team for Dhaka earlier.

The left-arm spinner will replace his Surrey captain Gareth Batty, who took four wickets in the Chittagong win. In a further change Steven Finn will replace the rested Stuart Broad who remains one cap away from 100.

“Zafar is going to make his debut, coming in for Gareth, and Finny is coming in for Broady,” confirmed Cook.

“He clearly has the ability to take the ball away from the right handers. He can bowl a good pace with good control. It will be really interesting to see how he goes.

“He can also bat as well, which is good.”

When asked if the 24-year-old could become a permanent fixture in the side, Cook thought Ansari could play a similar role to Ravindra Jadeja, India’s left-arm spinner.

“He could challenge, yeah,” said Cook. “You see the success Jadeja has bowling wicket to wicket to right handers. It’s very hard work [for batsmen] if you can control length consistently over a long period.”

Cook added that Broad, on 99 Test caps, was in agreement that bigger battles lie ahead.

“I’m sure he’d [Broad] like to get that milestone but this is a case of looking a bit further to the future and he understands the amount of cricket he could play over the next six weeks.”

England were considering a third change, with Jake Ball close to a recall, but Cook wanted Chris Woakes to have another match in unfamiliar conditions.

“In an ideal way we’d have liked Jake to have a game,” said Cook.

“But we feel Chris Woakes hasn’t played a huge amount of cricket on the subcontinent and didn’t have a huge workload in the last game. We feel he will benefit for a bit more experience in these conditions.

“We want other people up and running. We don’t want to go to India with too many people not played any cricket.”

Cook added that England were unlikely to entertain four spinners, especially after the success the quicks had with the old ball in Chittagong.

“We like the three spinner-three seamer option,” said Cook. “You saw when the ball started to reverse how dangerous our seamers were.”

Despite making two changes to a winning team, Cook is adamant that victory in Dhaka is at the forefront of his thoughts.

“It doesn’t stop our intensity of trying to win the game.”

England:

Alastair Cook (captain)
Ben Duckett
Joe Root
Gary Ballance
Moeen Ali
Ben Stokes
Jonny Bairstow
Chris Woakes
Zafar Ansari
Adil Rashid
Steven Finn

England return to Cardiff to play at least two games in the Welsh capital next June. Tickets are now on general sale for the NatWest International T20 against South Africa on 25 June from here, whilst before that they take on New Zealand in the ICC Champions Trophy group stage and could to Cardiff if they win their pool. The remaining ICC Champions Trophy tickets are back on sale from www.icc-cricket.com/tickets