England turn to young guns as T20I cycle begins again

Twice this year, England captains have seen their decision to throw the new ball to a fingerspinner backfire. Their responses to similar gambles which didn't pay off told a story.

In Hyderabad in January , Ben Stokes gave Tom Hartley the second over of India's first innings of the series. Yashasvi Jaiswal promptly hit his first and fifth balls for six. In Bridgetown, five months later, Jos Buttler gave Will Jacks the second over against Australia . Travis Head and David Warner ruthlessly targeted the short leg-side boundary, and the over cost 22.

Stokes stuck with Hartley even as he went the distance, keeping the field up and giving him eight further overs on the first evening of the Test: "I lost no confidence," he said. In the second innings, he was England's match-winner, taking 7 for 63. Jacks, by contrast, was immediately whisked out of the attack, not used again with the ball, and was dropped two games later.

In part, this contrast reflected the difference between Tests and T20 as formats. The second chance is a fundamental part of Test cricket's fabric: across four innings and five days, there is always the opportunity to recover from a mistake. In T20, one error - or even one moment of bad luck - is often terminal: the format's brevity is what makes it so punishing.

Yet the difference in how Hartley and Jacks were handled also revealed the attitudes of their respective teams towards young players. Under Stokes and Brendon McCullum, England have backed youth: eight players have featured for them in Tests this year while aged 25 or younger. In T20Is, under Buttler and Matthew Mott, it is only Jacks and Harry Brook.

It has been a reflection of England's previous success. Buttler has been fiercely loyal to the generation of players with whom he created history, becoming the first men's team to hold both the 50-over (2019) and T20 (2022) World Cups simultaneously. England have lent towards giving their golden generation of white-ball talent one game too many, rather than one too few.

At last year's 50-over World Cup, England picked a team in which every player was at least 30 years old for their defeats to Sri Lanka, India and Australia; they even left Brook out of their provisional squad, though he eventually replaced Jason Roy. In June, they backed Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow and Chris Jordan to come good in the Caribbean, but with little return.

That will change on Wednesday night, in the first of eight white-ball games - three T20Is and five ODIs - against Australia at the Utilita Bowl near Southampton. England will give T20I debuts to two young players in Jacob Bethell (20), Jordan Cox (23), with Jamie Overton (30) also winning his first cap in the format. John Turner , Dan Mousley (both 23) and Josh Hull (20) could come into contention later in the series.

The old guard are now moving on: at 36, Adil Rashid is five years older than anyone else in this week's squad, with Moeen Ali recently joining Dawid Malan in announcing his retirement . "I did my job, and it's time for the next guys to come in," Moeen said on Sunday. "The team needs to go in that direction… it probably just needs that cycle to start again."

McCullum has already shown as Test coach that he can blood younger players, though will not take over as England's white-ball coach until January's tour to India. But Marcus Trescothick, who will deputise as coach in this series and on November's tour of the Caribbean, has worked with the Test set-up under McCullum and is conscious of helping young players flourish.

"We're looking at the next generation because we have a bit of time to prepare and expose them so that we can see how they react," Trescothick said on Tuesday. "We know that there's great talent within the county game. It's picking and choosing the right ones that we think will succeed at international cricket, because it is a slightly different game.

"It is really exciting when you see these youngsters coming through [aged] 19 or 20, fresh-faced and quite innocent when they come into the team, and to know what they could do and what they can achieve. The opportunity we have as coaches - within the Test group, and now in this group - is to harness those players."

There is plenty of excitement around the new generation within English cricket, and Bethell in particular. Trescothick worked with him at Under-19s level, and was immediately impressed: "It was really evident to me that he's going to be a superstar," he said. "I think you're going to enjoy watching him going forward over the next few years."

That Hartley does not feature in England's Test squad to tour Pakistan next month is evidence that players' progress is not always linear; so too is Overton, at 30, winning his T20I debut as a specialist batter. But what is clear is that Wednesday's T20I marks the start of a new era for England's white-ball teams, one in which youth will no longer be treated with suspicion.