BRENDON MCCULLUM AND BEN STOKES LAUNCH BUILD-UP TO 2025-26 ASHES WITH JONNY BAIRSTOW'S TEST CAREER OVER AS HE'S LEFT OUT OF SQUAD TO FACE WEST INDIES
- Jonny Bairstow's Test career is over after he was left out of the squad
- Decision to give the gloves to Jamie Smith is bad news for Ben Foakes
England will begin their long build-up to the 2025-26 Ashes this month with a new-look Test team that marks a clear break from the first phase of Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes’s Bazball project.
The announcement of a 14-man squad for the first two Tests against West Indies, starting at Lord’s on July 10, confirmed what had long been obvious: Jonny Bairstow’s 100-Test career is over, and possibly his entire England career too.
The decision to hand the gloves to debutant Jamie Smith, meanwhile, is bad news for his Surrey team-mate Ben Foakes, who at the age of 31 may struggle to add to his 25 caps, despite his ability behind the stumps. The long-running Bairstow v Foakes debate is over.
Other members of the squad that lost 4-1 in India to have been left out are spinners Jack Leach, Tom Hartley and Rehan Ahmed, and seamers Mark Wood and Ollie Robinson. Of those, only Wood can be confident of featuring in the future, with the three-year central contract he signed last year designed to protect him all the way to Australia.
When James Anderson retires from Test cricket after the Lord’s Test, the break with the past will be even cleaner.
Instead, the selectors have turned to fast-bowling novices. Surrey quick Gus Atkinson, who is 26 but has played only 19 first-class matches, is in line for a Test debut, with England keen for him to add snarl to his pace and talent.
And the selection of the 6ft 5in uncapped Nottinghamshire fast bowler Dillon Pennington, aged 25, is an acknowledgement of his progress since leaving Worcestershire.
There is also a recall for Durham’s Matthew Potts, who played the last of his six Tests a year ago, while the spin-bowling duties are in the hands of 20-year-old Shoaib Bashir, who took a pair of five-fors during his maiden Test series in India.
With Stokes now available to bowl again after successful knee surgery, and both Chris Woakes and Anderson set to play at Lord’s, England may decide they don’t need five seamers against West Indies, and give Bashir a game instead.
Surrey’s Dan Lawrence, who last played Test cricket in March 2022, but is admored by Stokes for his aggressive style, is the spare batsman.
For Bairstow, a long and eventful England career, also including 107 one-day and 80 T20 internationals, may have reached its natural conclusion. He turns 35 in September, and has lost mobility since his devastating ankle break on the golf course in 2022.
There were signs of his old belligerence during last summer’s Ashes, but he endured two poor trips to India either side of Christmas - first at the one-day World Cup, then during the Tests - and had a mixed T20 World Cup in the Caribbean.
England’s next white-ball series is against Australia in September, when the focus will be on the future: a Champions Trophy in Pakistan in March, and the next T20 World Cup, in India, in 2026. It is hard to see how Bairstow features in either.
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