England Lions selections display breadth of talent across the circuit

England Lions squads tend to be fun, and this one is no different.

Fun, because we don't quite know what they mean. Fun, because they provide a chance for everyone to get a feel for the lie of the land. Fun, because they reward achievement at county level. Fun, because at the end of a long season, there are so many cricketers worthy of wider recognition.

Quite frankly, you could replace every player, come up with an entirely alternative squad and still end up with a perfectly justifiable list.

But it's difficult to argue with the selection of a group like this, mainly because no one quite knows the parameters involved. In Mo Bobat's own words, "selection for the camp was conducted in close collaboration with both players and counties, and there are a number of players that have been encouraged and supported to take up other opportunities at home and overseas".

Effectively, there might be players missing from this squad, and there might also be innocent explanations. Take Sam Hain, for instance, routinely one of the leading county cricketers in most years, including this, who appears to have waited longer than most for an overdue opportunity. He would have been travelling to the United Arab Emirates were it not for a hamstring injury picked up in Warwickshire's face-saving win on the last day of the season.

So, there is an invitation to take with a pinch of salt that there are 11 uncapped players and eight who are aged 23 or younger in a touring party of 15, with four international cricketers included, all of whom made the most recent of their Tests appearances this year.

Haseeb Hameed has been compensated for an excellent domestic season, in which he finished only behind Wayne Madsen on the County Championship run-scoring list. He was pilloried for his performances in Australia, but no one has ever doubted his game on lower, spinning pitches – both of which are characteristics of Pakistan – where the height of his hands is less likely to trouble him. He could well slot in, should something happen to one of Zak Crawley or Keaton Jennings between now and the Test winter.

^{Dan Lawrence hasn't played for England since the Test series in the Caribbean earlier this year (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)}

Rob Key has already explained the absence of Matt Potts from the Pakistan squad – a horses-for-courses choice, in short – so three weeks spent on Lions duty, refining a game that is still raw after being plucked from county cricket without previous Lions experience, seems a logical next step.

In the cases of Matt Fisher and Dan Lawrence, it's just nice to see them back: Fisher made his debut on the unforgiving featherbeds of the Caribbean, made a positive impression and then promptly joined the train of stress fractures haunting the English game. Lawrence impressed in the same series, came within nine runs of a Test hundred, suffered a hamstring injury at the wrong time and has been usurped by Harry Brook and re-usurped by Ollie Pope.

In a sense, they are the less interesting picks – obviously on the radar and so hardly surprising anyone. Alex Lees' omission – and that of Rory Burns – suggests England have moved on, while Dom Sibley was expected in some quarters to be recognised in some form this winter.

Instead, Tom Haines is the second opener on the trip. Some judges will say he's not even the most talented of Sussex's opening pair, but he has a year on Ali Orr in terms of consistent first-class runs and finished the season with the remarkable feat of two centuries in a day. He broke his thumb midsummer, hence his relative paucity of runs compared to some of the others selected here, but it's a selection merited on raw output.

And that is particularly important at a time like this, with county cricketers none-the-wiser as to what their schedule will look like year-on-year and similarly unsure of quite what is required of them to make the step-up. Liam Livingstone's selection for the Pakistan series will have exacerbated that in some respects, having not played any red-ball cricket in 2022, but under Key, Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, those pushing for places can at least look to the precedents of Potts, Brook and Jamie Overton, all of whom were picked on the back of excellent performances for their counties.

Sam Cook, picked for the Lions after 51 wickets at 16.23 apiece in a division where runs were the order of the year, can't be far away from a promotion to the senior squad. Dillon Pennington might count himself unlucky to miss out: tall and broad-shouldered, he took 44 wickets for Worcestershire.

^{England Lions defeated the touring South Africans over the summer (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)}

In that category – of bowlers who had an excellent 2022 – Sam Conners' selection is well deserved. Derbyshire haven't often been an England feeder in recent times, but the 23-year-old seamer – with a slightly slingy action and decent pace – was one of 11 men in the country to take 50 County Championship wickets this summer, doing much of that work in toilsome conditions at Derby.

His selection – and those of Haines, Rehan Ahmed and Jack Carson – ought to come as a source of reassurance to talented players at some of the less fashionable or less successful counties that there is no longer a closed shop. Six of this squad comes from the bottom four teams in Division Two and nine from the second tier as a whole, which hardly speaks to the consensus around the standard towards the bottom of the pile.

Jack Haynes, one of the most aesthetically pleasing batters in the domestic game and a proper talent, is an exciting choice. He had never made a first-class ton until mid-May and then reeled off three in a row, including an unbeaten, match-saving effort against a Durham team containing Stokes and Potts.

Liam Patterson-White and Lyndon James, two of the homegrown, lower-profile stars of Nottinghamshire's promotion were arguably two of the players of the year. Both offer options with bat and ball, and at 23 under Peter Moores' tutelage their progression will only go one way. Patterson-White, interestingly, ended the summer as Jack Leach's standby rather than Liam Dawson, which leaves him well placed for a Test call-up should one of England's spinners – Leach is the only specialist on the trip – go down.

Ahmed, meanwhile, is a rare case as a teenage leg-spinner with a first-class century and a £50,000 Hundred contract, and it's understandable for England to want to take an early look, particularly with Matt Parkinson apparently out of favour at present. It's striking that none of Parkinson, Dom Bess nor Mason Crane are part of this tour when all three made the journey to Australia 12 months ago.

^{Haseeb Hameed had an excellent summer for Nottinghamshire (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)}

Indeed, only five of that squad are involved in this party, albeit Saqib Mahmood is on the comeback trail, Liam Norwell endured an injury-ravaged season (despite his last-day heroics), and Ben Foakes has since graduated to the main squad.

Tom Abell and Josh Bohannon are both primed for their second successive excursion as reward for regular runs over a significant period of time, as is Jamie Smith, who is of a slightly different profile. He is the only wicketkeeper selected, which would prove interesting were a mishap to befall Foakes, who is the only specialist keeper in the main squad.

Sam Billings has been left out of the Test squad on the understanding that he could still fly to Pakistan in the case of an emergency, but the pick of Smith feels intriguing, a suggestion that he might theoretically be third in line to the gloves at the moment, with Jonny Bairstow injured.

But that suggestion is only a suggestion. That's why these England Lions squads are fun – because they tell you plenty about the current thinking and the shape of the future, but never the full picture.

Related Topics

• Eleven uncapped players named in England Lions squad for UAE trip