Joe Root vows to 'be bold' and take risks

Joe Root has promised England will be “bold” against Sri Lanka and is not afraid to experiment with his side, but 24 hours from the start of the series in Galle there are many question marks over the make-up of the team.

The England management will sit down on Monday after the final net session but may leave a final decision until the morning of the match, partly because rain is forecast which means the pitch may not be as dry as expected.

Root and head coach Trevor Bayliss will pick the final team but chief selector Ed Smith is here in Galle and will sit in on the meeting in an advisory capacity.

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England were able to confirm on Sunday that Jonny Bairstow will miss the Test after failing to recover from an ankle ligament injury he sustained playing football two weeks ago.

But the absence of Bairstow throws up another selection dilemma for Root and Bayliss. Do they pick Jos Buttler, who kept in Bairstow’s absence against India in the fourth Test last summer, or hand a debut to Ben Foakes? Both worked with Bruce French, the wicketkeeping coach, at training on Sunday.

The biggest decision will be over Stuart Broad and whether to drop him for the first time in 10 years of Test cricket. England look certain to pick three spinners, leaving room for three seamers, with the choice between Broad and Sam Curran for the final spot behind James Anderson and Ben Stokes.

Root admitted on Sunday England have to be ready to try new approaches after six years of struggles in the sub-continent since beating India under Alastair Cook in 2012. England have won just one Test in 11 matches since then, with the solitary victory a narrow win in Chittagong two years ago.

England are sure the pitch will spin despite more heavy rain in Galle on Sunday. England like the balance of three different spinners in Jack Leach, Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid which means Joe Denly appears to have fallen out of contention for a Test debut.

Leaving out a player of Broad’s experience would be the biggest call of Root’s captaincy career but he insists if it happens then it should not be viewed as him being dropped. Instead it would be a tactical decision to go with another bowler, or better batsman-bowler, in Curran.

“It is always hard to leave out someone who has taken over 430 wickets. For Stuart, it wouldn't so much be a case of being dropped it would be for the balance of the team, or for the situation with the surface we go with a different formula,” said Root.

“We have so many different options we can go with. We have done things in a certain way the last three or four times we have come to the sub-continent and it hasn’t worked. We have got to be bold. We have to try things slightly differently. We have to be adventurous, show a bit of courage, come here and maybe take the odd risk that we haven’t done before if we are going to give ourselves a good chance of winning. I am not scared of doing that. This group of players are not scared of doing that. We are not scared of the surfaces, we are not scared of it spinning.”

England will set their stall out to attack, believing the Galle pitch will break up quickly, which could see them promote Buttler to No 3 and Foakes play as a specialist keeper. Buttler did not keep well in the one-day series and Sri Lanka is one of the hardest places for a wicketkeeper with low, slow bounce.

“They're both still very much in our thinking and that will probably come down to the combination we want to play. Definitely one of them will be keeping but how we structure the batting order, and what combination of bowlers we put in to the team, could determine who eventually gets the gloves,” said Bayliss.