England won the toss and chose to bowl first against Pakistan
England have named five new caps in their side for the first ODI of the series against Pakistan in Cardiff.
Brydon Carse (Durham's fast bowler), Zak Crawley (Kent's top-order batter), Lewis Gregory (Somerset's seam-bowling allrounder), Phil Salt (Sussex's top-order batter) and John Simpson (Middlesex's keeper) are all making their ODI debuts. While Crawley and Gregory have played Test cricket and T20Is respectively, the other three have no experience of international cricket.
England were obliged to announce an entirely new squad of players and support staff on Tuesday morning after an outbreak of Covid amid the original selections. That has resulted in 11 changes from their previous ODI.
Ben Stokes, playing his 99th match, will captain in ODI cricket for the first time. The rest of the squad have just 36 caps between them. No England squad has had fewer since March 1985 when Pakistan were again the opposition in Sharjah. The last time they handed out five new caps in ODI cricket was when they played Ireland in May 2015. Mark Wood and Jason Roy were among the new faces on that occasion.
There is a new face in the Pakistan side, too, with Saud Shakeel, a middle-order batter, making his debut. Their preparation has not been ideal, either, with warm-up matches limited to inter-squad affairs.
Stokes won the toss and chose to bowl first. Both sides, no doubt mindful of the short, straight boundaries, included only one specialist spinner, though Shakeel is also a part-time spinner.
England: 1 Phil Salt, 2 Dawid Malan, 3 Zak Crawley, 4 James Vince, 5 Ben Stokes (capt), 6 John Simpson (wk), 7 Lewis Gregory, 8 Craig Overton, 9 Brydon Carse, 10 Saqib Mahmood, 11 Matt Parkinson.
Pakistan: 1 Fakhar Zaman, 2 Imam-ul-Haq, 3 Babar Azam (capt), 4 Mohammad Rizwan (wk), 5 Saud Shakeel, 6 Shoaib Maqsood, 7 Shadab Khan, 8 Faheem Ashraf, 9 Hasan Ali, 10 Shaheen Shah Afridi, 11 Haris Rauf.
Brydon Carse
Zak Crawley
Lewis Gregory
Phil Salt
John Simpson
Saud Shakeel
Pakistan
England
England vs Pakistan
Pakistan tour of England
World Cup Super League
George Dobell is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
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