England’s white-ball star Liam Livingstone might make his Test debut real soon. According to a report by Daily Mail, the England team’s newly-appointed Test head coach Brendon McCullum has spoken to players such as Livingstone, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, and Adil Rashid to play Test cricket. This has come as a surprise as Ali has already announced his retirement from the format last year.
On the other hand, Rashid hasn’t played the longest format since 2019 when he played against the West Indies. Since then, he has been out of favour. Apart from this, Buttler isn’t having a great time batting against the red-ball in the last year. The right-hander has been dismissed while leaving the ball on several instances, as he has been unsure of his off-stump.
England's head coach Brendon McCullum has spoken to Moeen Ali, Liam Livingstone, Jos Buttler and Adil Rashid for playing Test Cricket. (According to Daily Mail)
— CricketMAN2 (@ImTanujSingh) May 29, 2022
Also, not to forget that Livingstone is yet to make his debut in the longest format of the game. All these players have done well in white-ball cricket internationally, but have failed in the multi-day format. Talking about Rashid’s numbers in Tests, he has played 19 games and picked 60 wickets with a poor average of 39.83. Ali has played 64 games and has done fairly with 2914 runs and 195 wickets.
Buttler, who made his Test debut way back in 2014 hasn’t done too much in red-ball cricket apart from his good seasons with the bat in 2014, 2018, and 2020. On the other hand, his Lancashire teammate, Livingstone, has a decent record in First Class Cricket with 3069 runs averaging 38.36 with a highest score of 224 runs. It will be interesting to see whether he gets an opportunity or not.
Last year, the right-hander had said that he wants to play the toughest format of the game but doesn’t want to be stuck if it doesn’t click. Meanwhile, the Three Lions have announced their 13-man squad for the first two out of three Tests against the Kiwis. Veteran pacers, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, who were left out for the West Indies tour have made their comebacks.
The team will play their first game of the series at Lord’s Cricket Ground from June 2.
