England’s fast-bowling quartet of Ollie Robinson, Josh Tongue, Jofra Archer and Gus Atkinson picked up 20 Pakistan wickets to win the first Test at Headingley inside three days. Both Robinson and Tongue finished with eight wickets each in the game, while Archer accounted for three scalps as Pakistan were skittled twice in 85.1 overs as England won by an innings and 103 runs.
While speaking to Wisden’s Cricket Weekly Daily, Butcher strongly felt that England have got the best chance to win Test matches with four quicks going forward. Even as the home side is keen on finding Ben Stokes’ replacement, who retired earlier this summer, he reckoned the fast-bowling quartet shouldn’t be broken.
Notably, Sam Curran is the leading candidate to replace Stokes but has been ruled out of the rest of the summer due to a groin injury. Curran is a like-for-like replacement for Stokes but to accommodate him in the XI, England might have to leave out one of the four fast bowlers played at Headingley. Butcher doesn’t want the hosts to take that route even when Curran becomes available.
“You know, in terms of a quartet, they've got a lot of bases covered in terms of all the different skills you might need for all different surfaces,” Butcher said. “So, you wouldn't want to break that up necessarily by changing that quartet to bring in somebody like Sam Curran to bolster the batting, but then you weaken the bowling in order to bring in a spinner who's unlikely to take you an eight-fer and blow a tail away.”
Instead, Butcher suggested England pick a spinner who can bat at seven or eight in order to retain the four quicks in their line-up constantly. However, for that to happen, England must look beyond Shoaib Bashir, who has played a specialist spinner whenever the conditions have warranted.
“I think four seamers should always be the plan A. I mean, that’s how we perform at our best. I think that, you know, they need to look elsewhere outside of Shoaib Bashir, and we've had this conversation before in terms of a spin bowling allrounder, somebody that can bat at seven or eight and be the spinner. That I think is the only way you get a specialist spin bowler into the lineup is if they hold a bat and they're not batting at 11,” Butcher added.
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