Surrey’s Ben Foakes & Ollie Pope have been named in the England Test squad for the upcoming tour of West Indies in March.
Club captain Rory Burns will remain at The Kia Oval to prepare for the 2022 LV= Insurance County Championship season, which starts on the 7th April.
Sam Curran was not considered for selection due to his ongoing recovery from a lower back injury sustained during an Indian Premier League fixture for Chennai Super Kings last October. He will also continue to train as part of the Surrey squad preparing for the domestic season.
Foakes receives the call-up having been part of the England Lions squad in Australia shadowing the senior side during the early part of their Ashes tour earlier this winter. He returned to the UK after the completion of the Lions match programme before Christmas.
The wicket keeper batter missed much of the 2021 season due to a hamstring injury but returned before the end of the campaign and has reported a clean bill of health since. He has played eight Test matches for England, scoring 410 runs and completing 19 dismissals.
Pope retains his place in the squad following that Ashes tour. The Surrey Academy graduate has 1032 runs in 23 Test matches to date.
Interim Head Coach Paul Collingwood will lead England for the tour after Chris Silverwood left his role following the recent Ashes series.
The three-match Test series forms part of the ICC World Test Championship. Joe Root’s team will be looking to climb the rankings after a disappointing start to the second edition of the Championship. At the end of the two-year cycle, the top two teams will compete in the ICC World Test Championship Final due to be staged in 2023.
They will travel to the West Indies on the 24th February before a four-day warm-up fixture in Antigua.
The first Test match begins at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground in Antigua on 8th March before the series heads to Barbados on the 16th March and finally Grenada from the 24th March.
FULL SQUAD
Joe Root (Yorkshire) – Captain
Jonathan Bairstow (Yorkshire)
Zak Crawley (Kent)
Matthew Fisher (Yorkshire)
Ben Foakes (Surrey)
Dan Lawrence (Essex)
Jack Leach (Somerset)
Alex Lees (Durham)
Saqib Mahmood (Lancashire)
Craig Overton (Somerset)
Matthew Parkinson (Lancashire)
Ollie Pope (Surrey)
Ollie Robinson (Sussex)
Ben Stokes (Durham)
Chris Woakes (Warwickshire)
Mark Wood (Durham)
