Will Jacks has entered England\u2019s thoughts for the day-night second Test against Australia as they look to level an Ashes series that, after arriving with confidence, is already in danger of slipping away.<\/p>\n
Jacks was viewed as something of a left-field pick when England named their 16-man squad<\/a> in \u00adSeptember, with the Surrey all-rounder having won the last of his two Test caps \u00adduring the 3-0 win in Pakistan three years ago and focused chiefly on white-ball cricket since.<\/p>\n But the knee injury to Mark Wood<\/a> has opened up a spot in the XI, with the final call being whether to stick with a five-man pace attack \u2013 Josh Tongue next in line, having returned from the Lions match in Canberra \u2013 or turn to either Jacks or Shoaib Bashir to \u00adprovide a spin-bowling option.<\/p>\n As England netted under lights on Monday evening, their main twilight session before the series resumes on Thursday, a crowd of about 25 spectators watched as Bashir and Jacks bowled in tandem to Ben Stokes \u2013 in what looked like an audition should the latter scenario play out.<\/p>\n Jacks in particular bowled for longer than during previous \u00adtraining sessions on this tour, as well as putting in a decent stint \u00adworking on the batting that could be \u00adstationed at No 8 and bolster \u00adEngland\u2019s lineup. If so, then Stokes would be required to bowl more overs as the fourth\u00a0seamer.<\/p>\n Much will hinge on \u00adEngland\u2019s reading of conditions in Brisbane and whether talk of the \u00adlatest pink Kookaburra ball going softer than its red equivalent means potential periods of attritional cricket. Given the first Test in Perth lasted only two days<\/a>, with millions of dollars in revenue lost, the Gabba groundstaff may be well wary of \u00adsetting things up for a repeat.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s record of played 14, won 13 in day-night Test cricket is imperious \u2013 a considerable challenge given the current scoreline. But that one defeat in the format took place in Brisbane in January 2024 when West Indies pulled off a shock for the ages<\/a>.<\/p>\n Josh Tongue featured for the England Lions against a Prime Minister\u2019s XI in Canberra last week. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/EPA<\/p>\n The pace of Shamar Joseph famously stole the show but their \u00adoff-spinning all-rounder, Kevin \u00adSinclair, also played a role. He scored 64 runs from No 8 across his two innings \u2013 vital in an eight-run win \u2013 and broke a stand worth 81 during Australia\u2019s first innings by removing Usman Khawaja. With this in mind, the more all-round Jacks could well be the way to go.<\/p>\n Though not as quick as Wood, a return for Tongue after his detour to Canberra would \u00admaintain the all-out pace approach seen in\u00a0Perth.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Either way, seam is still likely to be\u00a0the main wicket-taking threat, with Brydon Carse confident he and Jofra Archer can repeat the first\u2011innings assault that led to \u00adAustralia being rolled for 132 all out and left nursing some bruises.<\/p>\n Speaking before training, Carse said: \u201cI\u2019d like to think there will \u00adcertainly be moments in this game, and throughout the series, where we can have that sort of impact on the \u00adAustralian batting lineup.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have got to take massive amounts of confidence from that first\u00a0day in Perth. As a group of seamers we all offer different skills and attributes so hopefully we can continue to trouble some of the \u00adAustralian batters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Jacks has entered England\u2019s thoughts for the day-night second Test against Australia as they look to level…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-320905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}