England were handed a recent scare ahead of their Ashes tour of Australia when fast bowler James Anderson suffered a cracked rib during a preparatory training camp.
Andrew Strauss’ men head Down Under hoping to retain the little urn and are fancied by many pundits to do so, but the loss of Anderson would represent a major blow to their hopes.
Anderson is the undoubted spearhead of the England attack, with Stuart Broad and Steven Finn both lacking the experience gained by the Lancastrian over the last eight years.
The ECB insist that Anderson will be fit and raring to go when the series gets underway in Brisbane on November 25, but what options do England have if he is ruled out?
Can England retain The Ashes Down Under this winter? – Latest Cricket Betting
Both Broad and Finn offer height and bounce, while Anderson’s main forte is extracting swing with both the new and old ball – a skill much in demand for any international side.
The two back-up seamers in Strauss’ squad are Yorkshire’s Tim Bresnan and Surrey’s Chris Tremlett, who are both tall men who like to hit the pitch hard rather than look for any swing available.
However, swing has rarely been a crucial factor in Australia in recent times, with Anderson taking a mere five wickets at an average of 82.60 in the 2006-07 series Down Under which ended in a humiliating 5-0 whitewash.
Broad and Finn will both be playing their first Tests in Australia this winter, but their style of hit-the-deck pace has proved successful for a host of Australians in recent times, most notably the legendary Glenn McGrath and current star Mitchell Johnson.
So, maybe variety will not be such an asset and the lofty Tremlett will fill in for Anderson if he does miss out.
One man who will be a frustrated spectator will be Durham’s Graham Onions, whose continuing injury problems mean that he will have to watch the action rather than be involved in it.
His gun-barrel straight style would seem to be perfectly suited to Australian conditions and, had he been fit, he would surely have won the nod ahead of Tremlett or Bresnan.
Another option and the most similar replacement for Anderson would be Yorkshire’s Ajmal Shahzad, who was named in the Performance Squad which is also heading to Australia this winter.
The 25-year-old relies on swing as his main weapon and his fledgling international career has started in a promising manner.
He took four wickets on his Test debut against Bangladesh earlier this year and followed that up by taking eight wickets in four ODI’s against the Tigers and Scotland.
Shahzad’s low, whippy action is reminiscent of Simon Jones, a recent master of the art of swing for England, before injury problems ended his international career.
Whoever is called up if Anderson misses out, England will surely miss a man who has close to 200 Test wickets to his name.
