Eoin Morgan has a challenge on his hands to decipher his best T20I line-up from a wealth of options

NICK FRIEND: Since the World T20 final in 2016, England have rarely had their strongest squad available in T20I cricket. A year out from the T20 World Cup, they face South Africa at full strength - whatevever that looks like...

In recent times, England have rarely entered a T20I series at full strength; even in the summer, when Eoin Morgan’s side faced Australia, they were without Ben Stokes, Jason Roy and Jofra Archer.

Thus, a three-match series against South Africa a year out from the T20 World Cup in India takes on additional significance.

Take Archer, for example, coming into these games on the back of a fabulous Indian Premier League campaign, for which he was handed the competition’s MVP award. Circumstances have conspired to restrict him to four T20I appearances to date – the first, two days after his international debut, came against Pakistan in a side featuring just five of England’s current squad.

He is yet play alongside Stokes, Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali or Dawid Malan for England in the shortest format.

Likewise, Stokes has only played nine T20Is since the final of the 2016 World T20. Morgan, meanwhile, has featured in 32. As for Archer, different situations have played their part in that quirk, but the fact remains that England have rarely fielded their best side since Carlos Brathwaite’s heroics four years ago. Even then, only eight of the 16-man squad for that tournament are among the group in contention at Newlands.

And so, Morgan admitted on Thursday morning: “No is the answer – I don’t know my best XI.” Among the dilemmas to resolve over the course of the next 12 months are how to fit together a powerhouse batting line-up, who might have to miss out to do so and whether to opt for a second spinner in Moeen Ali or the left-arm swing of Sam Curran.

Curran might be the logical bet for the first match of this series – one of two to be played on the same surface in Cape Town, with Morgan waiting to see “if [the groundsman] takes more grass off the wicket”. But he knows as well “that we will need the option of two spinners” once his side touches down for a global tournament on the subcontinent a year from now.

Those considerations are what make this immediate period quite significant; England’s leap to 50-over World Cup glory last summer was characterised in the four-year cycle between 2015 and 2019 by balancing the construction of a winning habit with a need to learn and develop. For Morgan, the latter is most valuable in the short term.

^{Eoin Morgan has a challenge on his hands to work out his best T20I side}

“Winning at the moment would be great but for us, given the luxury in players we have at our disposal, it’s more important that we get their roles right and they feel comfortable within that,” he said. “If we manage to solve that problem, the results will look after themselves. The process of going through what is best for our team and best for our players to try and beat the opposition is extremely important.”

On what that looks like, he was coy. Asked whether Buttler and Roy would open the batting, he smiled, adding only: “Yes, that’s a possibility.”

England’s plethora of top order options has been well-documented: Bairstow, Roy, Malan, Stokes and Buttler all have justifiable claims to the position, while Tom Banton and Liam Livingstone are also in South Africa, albeit not in the T20I squad. Not to mention the shadow of Joe Root, looming large on the back of 45 off 26 balls in an intra-squad warmup game. In the aforementioned World T20 final, it was his 36-ball 54 that dragged England to a defendable total.

The Buttler debate is long-running: how best to utilise perhaps England’s greatest-ever white-ball batsman? He has opened in his last 10 T20I innings, with scores in that time of 44, 57, 61, 69 and 77. In eight of those, Roy was his partner, with Bairstow only taking over in two games against Australia when the Surrey man was missing with a side strain. England won seven of those 10 matches. Prior to 2018, Buttler had only opened once for England in T20Is – against Sri Lanka in 2016. He struck an unbeaten 73 in that game, also alongside Roy. Across that admittedly small sample size, he has struck 459 runs at an average of 51.

During his IPL stint with Rajasthan Royals, however, he was shifted down into the middle order for the good of a team heavily reliant on its top-heavy batting line-up and in need of his combination of nous and fireworks. With the extent of options at England’s disposal, a similar backward step seems unlikely.

Morgan explained: “To start with, you need to try and figure out what your best six or seven batsmen are. Then, the challenge within that is getting them in roles that best suits them and best suits the team, but also gives you the best chance of winning the game. Those are the challenges.

“Training in the last couple of days has been very exciting but also very dangerous. You look down the order of potential XIs we could put out: sometimes all 11 can hit sixes, sometimes the top 10. You look at the batting order and it is very, very exciting.”

^{Morgan and vice-captain Jos Buttler in training ahead of the first T20I against South Africa}

The same is true of England’s firepower with the ball, not least with Archer available and at his absolute best during the IPL, even if – by his own admission – he found himself counting down the days until he could end his bubble captivity. Out on the field, though, there were no such worries; he bowled 11 of the tournament’s 30 fastest deliveries.

“He’s one of the best of the world,” Morgan said. “He’s incredible to have around. I don’t think we will have him that often in between now and the World Cup. Certainly, one of the series that is going to be more relevant to have as close to full strength as possible is against India, if it is going to be in India, trying to replicate the World Cup.

“I think that’s too much of a challenge for guys playing all three formats at the moment given that we don’t know circumstances of getting in and out of bubbles, getting home or getting family on tour with you. It creates a different challenge.

“One of our challenges in just trying to get him into a headspace where he is enjoying his cricket while he is with us and make the most of the opportunities while he is with us.”

Sam Curran was another to enjoy a fruitful IPL – at least on a personal level. He emerged as one of few bright sparks in an otherwise abject campaign for Chennai Super Kings, a point not lost on Morgan.

“Coming off the back of the IPL, Sam has certainly grown in confidence, probably even more so with the bat than the ball,” he explained. “He was certainly thrown into all sorts of circumstances and had all sorts of challenges but came out the other side glowing, which is great and very difficult to do in a side that really didn’t compete at all. He’s grown a huge amount in confidence.”

Where he fits into England’s T20I plans, only time will tell. Morgan, as he knows, has a challenge on his hands – albeit the most thrilling dilemma imaginable.

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