- England’s new Test wicketkeeper Jamie Smith is set for a T20 call-up this year
- Smith is expected to be one of three uncapped players in England’s next squad
- Jamie Overton and Jacob Bethell are also in line to feature against Australia
Jamie Smith is one of three uncapped players identified for roles when England begin their Twenty20 rebuild against Australia later this summer.
England’s new Test wicketkeeper Smith, 24, is set to be joined in the three-match series against the Australians from September 11-15 by his Surrey team-mate Jamie Overton and Warwickshire’s 20-year-old Jacob Bethell.
Rob Key, the ECB’s managing director of men’s cricket, is yet to carry out a full review of a mid-season World Cup that saw England reach the semi-finals, but defeat only one Test playing nation in the process.
The future of white-ball coach Matthew Mott – halfway through a four-year contract – is one of the issues he must make a call on, while it is uncertain whether Jos Buttler continues as captain.
Regardless, there will be changes in personnel, with new blood viewed as essential to revitalising an ageing group.
Jamie Smith, 24, is set to make his T20i debut for England against Australia in September
Jamie Overton is also expected to be named in England’s squad for the three-game T20 series
Smith’s savagery speaks for itself. He averages 3.4 sixes an innings in this season’s Vitality Blast and is one of only two players in the competition’s top 150 runs scorers with a strike rate in excess of 200 – Australian tail-ender Nathan McAndrew, in 100th place, the other.
Last week, he transferred his boundary-clearing prowess to Test cricket when he struck two huge blows in a debut innings of 70, and is viewed by a multi-format player by Key.
England’s batting lacked dynamism at times in the Caribbean. Overton would have provided some, potentially, but for a back injury ruling out the big-hitting, all-rounder.
Barbados-born Bethell, meanwhile, is viewed as the answer to a lack of left-hand, right-hand balance in the middle order – Ben Duckett was the only left-handed batting specialist in the 15-man squad knocked out by India in the last-four clash in Guyana, but he lacks the power game increasingly necessary in cricket’s shortest format.
Bethell showed he has that in spades last month, slamming Northamptonshire for a 15-ball 50 – second only amongst Englishmen in the competition’s history to a 13-ball effort by Marcus Trescothick for Somerset versus Hampshire in 2010.
The emergence of another spin bowling, all-rounder in Bethell – his slow left-arm has an economy rate of 7.36 for the table-topping Bears this season – possesses the potential to end another long-term international career this summer, following that of Jimmy Anderson.
Jacob Bethell (pictured) is another player being lined up for his international debut
England used vice-captain Moeen Ali in the top five throughout the World Cup in order to break up the right-hand uniformity, but his struggles for T20 international runs continued: his top score in his 19 most recent innings is 26.
Now 37, and in the final months of a one-year central contract, Moeen might be heading for a franchise future as England look to develop a new-look team with the next World Cup – hosted by Sri Lanka in February 2026 – in mind.
Question marks also linger over Jonny Bairstow and Liam Livingstone, despite both being on two-year ECB deals.
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