How England's red-ball and white-ball squads could look if they played simultaneously this summer

Following suggestions that the ECB could be open to fielding separate Test and limited-overs squads to enable international fixtures to be played in a shortened summer, XAVIER VOIGT-HILL has a look at how the squads could line up

TEST SQUAD

Rory Burns, Dom Sibley, Joe Denly, Joe Root (c), Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope, Ben Foakes (wk), Sam Curran, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer, James Anderson

Bench: Zak Crawley, Jack Leach, Chris Woakes

Under the brief six-Test tenure of Chris Silverwood so far, England's Test side has begun to carve a successful groove courtesy of picking the players most suited to the rigours of the long-form game.

The selections, particularly during the 3-1 win away in South Africa, have also tended to skew younger, albeit not necessarily always through choice.

But those factors essentially allow us to draw upon a pool of red-ball players with negligible impact on what may or may not be happening elsewhere in the white-ball world, player fitness permitting.

Having featured in just the series opener in South Africa before damaging ligaments in his ankle, Rory Burns would be in a prime position to slot back into an opening berth at the expense of Zak Crawley, especially now he has volunteered his retirement from the perilous world of warm-up football.

With the top six now otherwise fairly settled and stable, including Joe Root and Ben Stokes continuing their captaincy tandem in the lower middle order, the only other batting change we might expect in a red-ball/white-ball split world would be with the gloves. Few could argue with how critical Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow are to England's limited-overs success of late, and their recent Test form is hardly helping their cases for continued selection in any case.

As such, and as may have happened during last month's abandoned series in Sri Lanka, our Test squad sees Burns joined by another Surrey colleague in Ben Foakes, while Ollie Pope can reprise his role as an emergency gloveman should the series demand it.

Perhaps the trickiest choice in a 14-man Test squad surrounds the balance of the bowling attack, with Somerset's Jack Leach and Dom Bess having alternated in the lead spin role over the last two years while the seamers (particularly James Anderson) have taken turns to suffer bouts of injury.

Assuming full squad availability, a Broad-Archer-Anderson trifecta would continue to pick itself for this summer at least, while the whippy left arm of Sam Curran is impossible to ignore in his strongest format. Leach and Chris Woakes can equally serve as bench-warmers and rotation-ready cogs in an expanded squad, while respective county teammates Bess and Olly Stone would be first choice reserves.

^{Surrey pair Rory Burns and Jason Roy would likely line up in two different England XIs}

WHITE-BALL SQUAD

Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, James Vince, Sam Hain, Eoin Morgan (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Moeen Ali, Tom Curran, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood, Saqib Mahmood

Bench: Liam Dawson, Chris Jordan, Liam Plunkett

England's ODI outfit may be coming up to the one-year anniversary of that famous day at Lord's, but six games of the stuff remain on the cards for this summer as Ireland and Australia come to town, as well as a pre-T20 World Cup programme that includes clashes with Australia and later Pakistan.

Root, Stokes, Archer and Woakes will be on red-ball duty in our hypothetical multi-game scenario, but that still leaves seven more players available from Eoin Morgan's title-winning XI as well as the entire four-man bench, and only the loss of Stokes' game-changing pace option to provide a real all-round balance would be an obvious that Morgan and team might struggle to replace.

There is just the one debutant in this particular squad – if this Root-less situation is not the time to select Sam Hain, the Warwickshire man who averages an astounding 59.78 in List A cricket to date, then when is? – but an olive branch of sorts can still be extended to Liam Plunkett, who has previously admitted his international days (with England, at least) may well now be over after being dropped for the winter tour programme.

However, an eye must still surely lie on building up a setup to defend the crown in 2023, and in Saqib Mahmood – the leading bowler in last year's One-Day Cup – England have a possible successor to Chris Woakes in the swing department at their disposal. With Archer in our hypothetical Test squad, Mark Wood remains for raw speed and even a potential hard-hitting cameo where necessary, while Chris Jordan appears increasingly prolific in the world of international T20 cricket.

As throughout that World Cup win, Liam Dawson remains on the bench, but Hampshire colleague James Vince is a natural option to replace the elegance of Root at first drop. While Hain might have the superior average in the 50-over game, the versatility that Vince offers in the T20 format (not to mention his career-best 190 for Hampshire in a One-Day Cup game last summer) paired with his leadership nous and increased scoring rate could help this finally become the 29-year-old's time to shine.

^{Ben Stokes' exploits make him a certain pick for Test duty, but how might the white-ball sides cope in his absence?}

BONUS: T20 SQUAD

Tom Banton (wk), Alex Hales, Laurie Evans, Liam Livingstone, Dawid Malan, David Willey, Gregory, Benny Howell, Pat Brown, Harry Gurney, Matt Parkinson

Bench: Sam Billings, Phil Salt, Reece Topley

Speaking to the media earlier this week, Eoin Morgan remarked that his attentions as white-ball captain are now shifting firmly towards the T20 World Cups of 2020 and 2021 as the unfolding pandemic threatens to extinguish any chances of any action in The Hundred, T20 Blast, IPL or English home summer.

As such, with those two tournaments looming this October and next, if any white-ball cricket is to be played by England's men this truncated summer then perhaps this would be the wisest format to prioritise.

A pure T20 focus for our earlier white-ball squad would not cause that much by way of an upset – in fact, it could be achieved with tweaks perhaps as minor as swapping Dawid Malan in for the uncapped Hain, ensuring Jordan slides into the first-choice XI for Mahmood, and pinching one or both of Archer and Stokes out of the Test setup to get a dash more short-form game-time into their legs.

But we are just thinking out loud here, and if two squads could play concurrently then why on earth not three? Going down this sort of extraordinary route could help extend chances to impress towards distant fringe players on England's radar ahead of October's trip to Australia, or even give some of the seemingly forgotten one last shot to prove their worth on the international stage.

Five-cap Somerset allrounder Lewis Gregory would lead this team as he is clearly rated highly around the ECB, skippering the Lions' victorious trip down under earlier in February and earning captaincy responsibilities for The Hundred's Trent Rockets. Alex Hales and David Willey, exiled for various reasons one year ago, would provide globetrotting short-form experience and a veteran undertone to the XI, and young guns Tom Banton and Matt Parkinson could finally get a chance in England colours in their favoured roles.

More wildcard selections could include Benny Howell and Laurie Evans, who have built formidable reputations in the 20-over game in recent years without so much as a sniff at higher honours (save for Evans' maiden Lions appearances in February) or even Reece Topley, the left-arm quick who last featured for England more than four years ago but appeared in very good touch last summer when returning to T20 action with Sussex after spinal surgery.

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