Just as it was for the T20 World Cup last year, Jos
Buttler called Jason Roy to inform him that he had not been included in
England’s final World Cup team. Although Buttler considers Roy to be a good
friend and the two have been teammates on the international stage for almost
ten years, Buttler has struck Roy twice in the past 13 months.
His exclusion might spell the end of his career
abroad. Roy is set to be a non-traveling reserve for the World Cup, according
to England’s national selector Luke Wright, who also reiterated that they
“certainly haven’t ruled him out” of further selection. He still has
a chance to suit up for Ireland in the second and third ODIs.
When England’s selectors convened in Nottingham five
weeks ago to choose their preliminary team, Roy and Jonny Bairstow were both
included as members of their preferred opening tandem. Roy had credit in the
bank despite playing sparingly in the English summer due to a calf ailment
following a strong IPL season with Kolkata Knight Riders.
In the different circumstances of Bloemfontein and
Mirpur this year, he had scored hundreds in two of his six ODI innings, and he
was the player that England had chosen more frequently than any other for
50-over cricket in between World Cups. Even though his results decreased over
the course of the four-year cycle, he still had a strike rate of 105.53 and an
overall average of 39.91 in 116 ODIs.
Things do, however, happen in sports, as Wright so
wryly put it. The things which cost Roy were Dawid Malan’s scores of 54, 96 and
127 against New Zealand to leapfrog Roy as Bairstow’s opening partner; Harry
Brook’s form after his initial omission in late August – 259 runs from 129
balls in his next four innings for Northern Superchargers and England – which
Matthew Mott described as the response of a great player; and Roy’s own fitness
issues, with back spasms on the morning of the first and third ODIs ruling him
out of the series.
The choice to replace Roy with Brook can seem odd
based just on ODI results: whereas Roy has more than 4000 runs and was a key
player in England’s World Cup victory four years ago, Brook has 123 runs in six
outings in this format whereas Roy has five 50-plus scores in seven innings.
But according to Wright, the selectors did not view it as a gamble when taken
in context.
England’s selection choices in the lead-up to World
Cups used to feel panicky; this one was cool and deliberate. Even if Roy’s
international career may still be ongoing because, as Wright would remind him,
things do happen in sports, if this is the end, it would be a brutal way for an
England white-ball legend to depart.