After a successful Test summer in home conditions, England travel to Sri Lanka to begin a three Test series in November.
With conditions so different to the English Summer, a squad must be selected that can succeed on the foreign pitches that will be much more suited for batting and eventually spin bowling.
The retirement of 161 Test and former captain Alistair Cook has left a massive hole at the top of the order and lack of runs from the middle-order has opened up positions in a weak batting line-up that need to be addressed.
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| Rory Burns of Surrey CCC |
Surrey's Rory Burns looks to be the favorite to benefit from Cook's unexpected retirement, his 1053 runs this season and his fifth season of 1000+ runs should be enough to give him a debut on 6th November.
Ollie Pope is likely to remain with the squad while Ben Foakes could return after touring Australia last winter and having a good season in the county championship himself, scoring 532 runs.
James Vince has again made runs in the championship as well, 896 of them so far, meaning he will be expecting a recall as batting cover, despite not seeming to have made the most of his chances at Test level so far.
The return to form with bat and ball from Moeen Ali and the confidence in Adil Rashid in home conditions has realistically filled the spin options, with Jack Leach and Dominic Bess of Somerset both waiting in the wings after their debuts earlier in the year, Leach will be the most likely to benefit as the third spin option after a much better season than his counterpart - 27 wickets to Bess's 11.
My England squad for Test series in Sri Lanka 2018:
Joe Root (C)
Jonny Bairstow (WK)
Moeen Ali
James Anderson
Stuart Broad
Rory Burns
Jos Buttler (VC)
Sam Curran
Ben Foakes
Keaton Jennings
Jack Leach
Ollie Pope
Adil Rashid
Ben Stokes
James Vince
Chris Woakes
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