ECB announced Squad for 3rd Test Match:
ECB has announced squad for 3rd test match on Indian tour. England will miss Stuart Broad due to fitness issue. Broad sustained a right foot injury during first morning of Visakhapatnam Test. Even though XRay results shows it is not serious; he will still miss playing in 3rd test match. Chris Woakes will replace injured Stuart Broad as a seamer. "Stuart is definitely out," Alastair Cook confirmed. "And Chris Woakes is definitely in". Jos Butler is included in squad in place of Ben Duckett. Duckett struggled against Indian attack on sub-continent pitch and will have to give way to Butler. Ansari got ill during Visakhapatnam Test, he is not fully recovered and complaint about sore back. Offspinner Gareth Batty is set to replace unfit Zafar Ansari, who will provide England spin option.
England test squad in 3rd match will bring a lot of energy to the team. England will benefit a lot from inclusion of Chris Woakes in the test squad. He hardly bowl a bad ball and has tremendous accuracy while delivering longer spells. Jos Buttler started as wicket keeper batsman and then started to struggle in both department. Cook do not want to rush him back in to old duties and will most likely use Buttler as a specialist batsman in the match. "There was no temptation to give Jos the gloves back. I think Jonny's been outstanding and has settled in that role and done very well". Ben Duckett is a young talented batsman but unfortunately he couldn't click in this test series. Duckett will be part of England long term future plans. Batty is an off spin bowler like Moeen Ali and might not be that effective against India right handed batsman as Ansari would have been. Being fresh in the series, Batty might impress selectors and bring some fresh energy to the over all squad. England squad for 3rd test match look pretty balanced with three spinners and three seamers with 5 specialist batsman.
Few milestones might be achieved by players from both sides. Moeen Ali needs only 5 more wickets to reach 100 test wickets. Virat Kohli and Alastair Cook are close to accomplish milestones. Kohli needs 109 runs to reach 4000 test runs and England skipper Cook needs another 105 runs to reach 11000 test runs. If England wants to win this match then they will have to come up with some strategy to dismiss Virat Kohli. Once he is set then it is too hard for any team to get Kohli out. India lead test series 1-0, and it is very important for England to win this game in order to stay alive in test series.
England Squad for 3rd Test Match: Alastair Cook (captain), Haseeb Hameed, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, Gareth Batty and James Anderson.
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