Ed Joyce: another gamble

Yesterday England lost their most experienced batsman. In his place they have called up the least experienced of the realistic options – Ed Joyce, the stylish, gifted, but uncapped Middlesex left-hander.

The gamble on Marcus Trescothick backfired badly, but that hasn’t stopped the selectors taking another one. The experience they gave Rob Key (15 Tests, four of them on the last Ashes tour) and Owais Shah (one highly successful Test in India earlier this year) has been binned. The idea of maintaining a clear and logical pecking order has gone with it.

The thinking seems to be that they need another left-hander, and that Australia’s pacy pitches will suit Joyce, with his strong eye and fluent strokeplay. He is Ireland’s answer to David Gower, and Gower was certainly at home in Australia, hitting nine international centuries there. With Trescothick goes a chunk of England’s flair: they now have a batting line-up that includes two old-school grafters, Cook and Collingwood. The choice of Joyce offsets that. He may even be tempted to go up in a Tiger Moth.

But it still feels like an interesting selection rather than a convincing one. England were already hurling inexperience at the wily veterans in the Aussie attack; as Rob Smyth pointed out yesterday over on the Guardian site, not one of England’s revised top six has played an Ashes Test in Australia. Three of them – Cook, Bell and Collingwood – could be fairly clueless facing Shane Warne. Can England really afford to be without Shah’s excellence against spin?

The decision also unbalances the batting order, leaving England with only two players who are comfortable in a Test top three, Strauss and Cook, along with three number fives (Collingwood, Pietersen and Joyce) and two number sixes (Bell and Flintoff). They may have to use Matthew Hoggard as nightwatchman in every innings.