Mark Butcher: Former English cricketer Mark Butcher has warned against breaking the fast-bowling quartet to fill in all-rounder Sam Curran. Since the retirement of Test captain and iconic all-rounder Ben Stokes, England face a major challenge of roping in the personnel who can fill in his all-round role, even to some extent without distracting the combination.
Curran, who was recently ruled out of the rest of the English summer, was mooted as an ideal replacement for the retired Stokes. However, Butcher has warned that it should not happen at the expense of breaking the fast-bowling combination of Ollie Robinson, Jofra Archer, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson.
"You know, in terms of a quartet, they've got a lot of bases covered in terms of all the different skills you might need for all different surfaces," Butcher said, as quoted by Wisden. "So, you wouldn't want to break that up necessarily by changing that quartet to bring in somebody like Sam Curran to bolster the batting, but then you weaken the bowling to bring in a spinner who's unlikely to take you an eight-fer and blow a tail away."
