Talking Cricket: Are England returning to the dark, axe-wielding days of selection?

As England shuffle the pack for the test series against Pakistan in the UAE, are we in danger of a return to the dark days of the axe-wielding selectors of the last century…

England announced the latest test squad on Tuesday, but with more chopping and changing they must be wary of a return to the confidence-shredding selection policies of the 1990s.

The 16-man party for the three-test series with Pakistan in October provides as many questions as answers, especially with the winter’s main event - the tour to South Africa - to follow.

Having had a full summer to digest his options, coach Trevor Bayliss will have had a major input into the selection process for the first time.

It is understandable that a new direction will be taken. But it must also come with a word of caution given the confusion of the last 12 months.

The dark days before the turn of the century saw England’s Test team become too often a bedraggled bunch, constantly looking over their shoulders to see when the axe would next be wielded.

Many international careers were ruined by a failure to back the best. Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick are the two most infamous cases from that era and ultimately it was the team that suffered.

Fast forward a couple of decades and England paid the price for poor decision making during the tour to the West Indies in May.

Sam Robson joined a growing list of discarded openers while Adam Lyth and Adil Rashid were two of the bright new names on the list for the Caribbean.

Both were overlooked in the series with the latter painfully left on the sidelines despite a turning track in the final Test defeat in Barbados. Lyth, meanwhile, can perhaps point to his non-selection in the Caribbean as a missed opportunity to give him more time to prepare for an Ashes summer.

Instead, Jonathan Trott was given the chance to resurrect his career as an opener but subsequently retired from international cricket after a ragged display from all in the series.

The end of the summer has seen Lyth and his Yorkshire teammate Gary Ballance, the third quickest to a 1,000 Test runs for England, both dropped as England won a slow-bike race with Australia.

The Nottinghamshire pair of Alex Hales and James Taylor have taken their places for the tour of the UAE and it will be a toss up between handing a Test debut to the former or promoting Moeen Ali to open that needs to be made.

The other new name in the party was Surrey’s left-arm spinning all-rounder Zafar Ansari, and he more than any other is a clear indication that this is a horses for courses squad.

If they opt for an additional spinner to counter Pakistan on the turning pitches of the UAE then Ali is likely to open with Alastair Cook to accommodate. One thing is for sure, the Worcestershire batsman will not be the man to face the pace of Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander thereafter.

Will Hales then be thrown in at the deep end for a Test debut as opener on Boxing Day in Durban? Lyth would certainly advise against that course of action.

We also know that Bayliss last week met with Nick Compton, who with Cook shares the highest post war average as an opening partnership for England.

The Middlesex batsman hoped to pave the way for a return to the Test fold following the unkind tag of having a “face that didn’t fit” in the previous regime.

The message that came back to Compton was that era has passed but he requires more runs - Compton went on to hit 149 to turn the match on its head against champions Yorkshire in the last round of the County Championship fixtures.

If Hales is the opener backed in the UAE and he fails, what next? Will they return to Compton or even Lyth?

Changes are inevitable in sport. It was right to move on from Ballance during the Ashes as he was clearly out of form but to leave him out of the batsman-friendly trip to the UAE will put him, like Compton, under excruciating pressure if they are recalled in South Africa.

To their credit, the selectors gave Lyth every chance in the summer and he will most likely need to build a water-tight case next year. The same can be said for Robson, who failed to do just that this season.

Taylor is the spare batsman named in the squad after a fruitful summer for his county and in the one dayers for country. His presence now places him ahead of Ballance as natural successor to Ian Bell, who is at a pivotal moment in the senior years of his career.

Much like the great Australian sides that tormented our tortured teams until 2005, it was said in the last decade that it was harder to get out of the England team than to get into it. That is no longer the case. Bayliss and co must now act quickly to make sure that the revolving door, at the top of the order in particular, doesn’t become the poisoned chalice that the number three spot became for the nearly men of the nineties.