Legendary former all-rounder Lord Botham has suggested England should pick four frontline fast bowlers in the first Ashes Test against Australia.<\/p>\n
Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue and Matthew Potts are all in England’s squad alongside all-rounder and captain Ben Stokes.<\/p>\n
Picking four quicks would likely mean omitting spinner Shoaib Bashir.<\/p>\n
“I think the West Indies did pretty well with four pace bowlers – and another six waiting to get in,” said Botham, who played 102 Tests between 1977 and 1992.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s the right way. <\/p>\n
“You want to be aggressive, you want the ball to come through. Players who aren’t in good form don’t like it in the ribs, so it will be interesting.”<\/p>\n
Botham also name-checked Durham pace bowler Carse, who has taken 36 wickets in nine Tests but is yet to play in an Ashes series.<\/p>\n
“I think Carse might surprise a few of you,” Botham told reporters in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“He’s a very aggressive bowler and he’s got enough pace to make you hop around a bit. He can bat a bit as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary former all-rounder Lord Botham has suggested England should pick four frontline fast bowlers in the first Ashes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-257211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}