So who’s in England’s first choice Ashes bowling attack then?

4 minute read

In April 2024, Rob Key, Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum told James Anderson they were looking to regenerate the England Test bowling attack ahead of the next Ashes and could he maybe provide them with another regeneration slot to help them in their efforts. Since then, they’ve given themselves plenty of choice, but not too much in the way of first choice. 

England’s first-choice Ashes bowling attack is probably…

It’s still early days, but Atkinson’s 63 wickets at 22.01 earn him a place. Having now exited an aeon of extraordinary predictability when it came to opening bowlers, the guy kicking things off at the other end is however weirdly hard to identify.

In the last two years, England have asked 14 players to open the bowling. Atkinson has done it 23 times and Chris Woakes has done it 27 times.

It’s both unclear and moot whether Woakes was ever even pencilled-in for the shiny new Kookaburra. It kind of feels like was given an opportunity that wasn’t entirely being grasped even before this summer’s unforgiving slog and the displaced shoulder that unceremoniously brought it to a halt. 

So who else?

The next busiest England opening bowler in that timespan is actually Anderson with eight innings and after him it’s Brydon Carse with five. 

Carse looked a really useful older ball bowler when he first came into the side and after those five innings, he still looks like that. 

> Cook with gas: England’s parallel quick and not-quite-so quick bowling queues

Which brings us to, um, Joe Root, who’s opened the bowling four times in the last two years. This is as often as Mark Wood – who, like Carse, seems to favour the older ball – and more often than Matt Potts, Sam Cook, Josh Tongue and Ollie Robinson (who’s now so far from the conversation that it took us a minute to remember whether he was an Ollie or an Olly).

That most likely leaves us with the other fella who’s taken the new ball as often as Root and Wood. 

Now that he’s finally gone past Ian Peebles on the list of Test wicket-takers, Jofra Archer probably makes as much sense as anyone. Only as much as we all have fantasies of him and Wood taking it in turns to one-up each other on the speed gun, we’d be amazed if the turn-taking weren’t organised on a match by match basis. England have two legitimately fast bowlers and neither’s getting through five Test matches. They’ll tag in and out with each other, right? 

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When Archer plays, Carse can revert to his older ball role. But then who would open the bowling in the Wood matches? We genuinely don’t know. Last time he bowled in Australia, Wood took 6-37 and his first wicket came in the 15th over. That’s his job. Don’t change anything there. 

And finally, what about the spinner? If there is one – and Stokes does like having one – then it can surely only be Shoaib Bashir. His record of 68 Test wickets at 39.00 is both uninspiring and a little bit better than you actually thought it was, which definitely says something about something – although Lord’s knows what specifically.

Bashir was always picked with the Ashes in mind and now it’s the Ashes. It would be super-weird to drop him for someone else.

The upshot of all this is that England’s first choice Ashes bowling attack shapes up as one they’d ironically never actually pick, even if everyone were fully fit (which obviously they won’t be). 

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