LONDON: England’s Tim Bresnan has been ruled out of the tour of New Zealand with an elbow injury while wicketkeeper Craig Kieswetter was dropped from the one-day squad.
National selector Geoff Miller announced yesterday a 15-man squad for the three Test series, with uncapped Warwickshire seamer Chris Woakes replacing Bresnan, who has been struggling with a right elbow problem for over a year.
Miller hopes the Yorkshireman will be fit in time for a packed schedule on home soil later in the year that sees England staging a return series against New Zealand, the Champions Trophy and an Ashes contest with Australia.
Kieswetter who played in 34 successive one-day internationals until England’s defeat by India in Mohali on Wednesday, was included in the original ODI squad for New Zealand.
But a run of low scores, as well as some indifferent performances with the gloves, have seen the Somerset man leapfrogged by county colleague Jos Buttler and Yorkshire’s Jonathan Bairstow in the revised squad announced yesterday.
Former England off-spinner Miller, explaining Bresnan’s absence, said: “It’s not necessarily an operation at this stage and we feel he’ll be absolutely fine; our medical staff say he’ll be fine for the (English) summer.”
Turning to Woakes, a near like-for-like replacement for Bresnan in that he too is a useful lower-order batsman, Miller, in an England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) statement, said: “He is coming in for all parts of the New Zealand tour because he’s shown with the (second-string England) Lions what he is capable of.”
As for Kieswetter, Miller said he’d failed to make the most of his chances.
“Craig has had an extended opportunity in ODI and T20 cricket and while he has shown evidence of delivering performances on the international stage, we don’t feel these have been consistent enough,” he said to journalists yesterday.
Root has made his debut in all three international formats in India.
England squads for New Zealand. Test squad: Alastair Cook (captain), James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Ian Bell, Stuart Broad, Steven Finn, Graham Onions, Monty Panesar, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior (wicketkeeper), Joe Root, Graeme Swann, Jonathan Trott, Chris Woakes
Twenty20 squad: Stuart Broad (captain), Jonathan Bairstow (wicketkeeper), Danny Briggs, Jos Buttler (wkt), Jade Dernbach, Steven Finn, Alex Hales, Michael Lumb, Stuart Meaker, Eoin Morgan, Samit Patel, James Tredwell, Woakes, Luke Wright
ODI squad: Alastair Cook (captain), James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow (wkt), Ian Bell, Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler (wicketkeeper), Steven Finn, James Harris, Eoin Morgan, Samit Patel, Joe Root, Graeme Swann, James Tredwell, Jonathan Trott, Chris Woakes. AFP
