England's batting lineup against India in the first test at Trent Bridge did not inspire confidence. The openers - Dom Sibley and Rory Burns - have been decent, but it's a fair question to ask if that's the best England can do. Zak Crawley and Dan Lawrence have had fairly uninspiring starts to their test careers, and Jonny Bairstow's form over the past couple of years had been dreadful. Joe Root stood out as perhaps the only truly reliable name in the batting lineup, which was further demonstrated as he almost single-handedly dragged England to a draw in the series opener - with a little help from the rain of course.
Whilst some of the weakness in the lineup can be attributed to the absence of Ben Stokes and the promising Ollie Pope, it still raises concerns about a lack of depth in England's batting. This is nothing new of course, and we now enter into a predictable cycle with calls that certain players are simply not good enough, blame placed on the white ball game, and clamours for the 'next big thing' from the County Championship to be given a chance - the current names circulating include Tom Haines, Jake Libby and Kiran Carlson.
Whilst we have no problem whatsoever in young, promising players being given their chance at test level, we wanted to examine the batsmen England have already tried over the past few years and see if any of them merit a second chance.
To do this we use our player ratings model which, described in more detail here, uses a combination of logistic and binomial regression to generate ratings for each player involved in a given set of matches - taking into account the quality of the opposition player. So, for example, batting well against the likes of Jasprit Bumrah is worth a lot more than it would be against, say, Wahab Riaz.
The thinking behind this is that the majority of the batsmen England have tried over the past few years have produced mediocre (at best) returns in terms of traditional metrics such as batting average, but our model may be able to identify players who have at least performed better than one might expect given the bowling they faced. With that being said, this also works as a more general overview of England's various batting options.
The analysis looks at all England test matches from summer 2016 up to and including the recent two test series against New Zealand. Our model has an adjustable weight that allows us to place more emphasis on either scoring runs or wicket preservation - the players are ordered using a balanced weight that gives equal emphasis to both, but in the final column we have also included the rankings for when we weight towards wicket preservation - a vitally important attribute in test cricket, particularly amongst top order players.
We have included all specialist batsmen who a) have played more than 5 innings for England in the qualifying period and b) remain eligible for selection for England.
With the pre-amble out of the way, let's take a look at the results:
All in all, it makes for some pretty grim reading for England fans. Just two batsmen in the qualifying period average over 40 - one of which is Haseeb Hameed who carries a very large "small sample size" banner above his head. The other is, of course, Joe Root, who unsurprisingly comes out as England's best batsman over the last 5 years, with Ben Stokes just behind him in second.
Unfortunately for our theory, it seems that most of the players that England have tried and subsequently dropped over the years sit firmly in the bottom half of our table, and look as if they genuinely are worse than the current group. It does at least indicate that the selectors are doing something right, but it's not especially promising for English cricket, especially with an Ashes trip to Australia just a few months away. There are, however, a number of interesting takeaways here that are worth discussing.
Probably most striking here is the position of Dan Lawrence, who despite averaging under 30 is ranked as the third best batsmen England have available to them. All the usual caveats around sample size hold true here but a dig further into Lawrence's fledgling test career casts some light on why England might be wise to stick with him for the time being.
Whilst his debut came in a two match series in Sri Lanka, he has since gone on to play three tests against India and two against New Zealand - both of whom have an array of high quality bowlers. What's more, is that even during these matches, the bulk of Lawrence's balls have been facing the better bowlers from these sides. He spent the bulk of his 81* against New Zealand fending off the likes of Trent Boult and Matt Henry, and his 96 runs across two innings in the final test in India was all the more impressive when you consider he spent most of that facing Ashwin and Patel, who between them took 17 wickets in the match.
In fact, the average ball that he has faced in his test career has been delivered by a bowler averaging just 23 against England, which indicates that it's been something of a baptism of fire for the batsman so far. Compare that to Crawley - who has a similar batting average to Lawrence but has scored this while facing bowlers averaging a somewhat less intimidating 29, and you might see why we'd be inclined to give the Essex batsman more time in the side.
A couple of places down the list we find Haseeb Hameed, who briefly looked as if he was the solution to all of England's top order batting problems when he impressed in three tests in India in 2016. Since then, however, his domestic form fell dramatically - he hasn't played for England since and it deteriorated to the point where he was released by his county in 2019. He has found some form and been back around the England setup more recently and so we would expect him to be back in the side sooner rather than later. If this analysis is anything to go by, that should be a positive for the team.
Just behind Hameed we see Bairstow, who is up there on the strength of his performances from 2016-18, rather than his more recent exploits. Given his poor recent form, you'd expect he would be struggling to keep his place if the likes of Ben Stokes and Ollie Pope were available. Another option the selectors could go with would be Ben Foakes, who ranks 9th in our list and 6th if we weight towards wicket prevention, as well as being an excellent wicket-keeper.
It's unlikely that the selectors would consider either Mark Stoneman or Joe Denly for a recall, so the only realistic outside shout out of those listed above would be Dawid Malan - who ranks 13th overall. That does rise to 10th when we weight on wicket preservation but given his average of under 28 you can hardly blame fans and pundits alike for wanting to see someone completely new instead.
Looking further down still, Dominic Sibley's placement at 14th may ring a few alarm bells. When we weight towards wicket preservation, however, he leaps up to 4th spot. As an opener this is at least promising, indicating that he is at least able to see off a new ball, even if he does not typically capitalise himself. If he were able to add a few more shots to his game he could become a very important player indeed for England, but for now he's still got a lot to prove.
And finally, a note on Alex Hales, who played 11 tests for England between 2015 and 2016, although only his later tests are including in our qualification period. He is ranked down in 18th overall, despite having one of the better batting averages amongst the players listed. In this analysis, he is something of an 'inverse Dan Lawrence', since the balls Hales faced came from bowlers averaging 39 with the ball, meaning that even though his raw figures appear impressive, he actually underperformed against some fairly weak bowling.
That concludes this look at England's batting. Despite how poorly they have performed of late, it does look as though the current set of batsmen is fairly close to being the best England have available to them. Unless Hameed can come in and deliver on the promise he showed in 2016, or someone else can make the step up from domestic cricket and hit the ground running, we'd expect England's hopes of posting big totals to lie on the shoulders of Joe Root and Ben Stokes for some time yet.
Thanks for reading! This article is part of a series in which we apply our player ratings system to each major test playing nation in turn in order to gain more of an understanding of their batting and bowling options respectively - please check out the other articles if you haven't already:
England - Batting | Bowling
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