England cricket squad: Will Ed Smith practice what he preaches in his first Test selection?

The first Test match squad of the summer is always the most difficult to predict, and therefore in many ways the most enjoyable. It’s only six weeks since England’s bedraggled cricketers stepped off the field in Christchurch after their 1-0 defeat to New Zealand, and yet a good deal of water has passed under the bridge since then. As new national selector Ed Smith prepares to pick his first squad, for next week’s first Test against Pakistan at Lord’s, rarely has English Test cricket felt so in need of new ideas, so ripe for renewal.

Smith’s appointment last month promised that, at least. Since retiring from cricket a decade ago, Smith’s appreciation of analytics and penchant for empirical judgement over received wisdom has been evident in his successful second career as a journalist and broadcaster. He will eschew the orthodox. He will reject the conventional. He will, at some point, almost certainly spring a surprise or two.

Column journalism is, in part, an act of salesmanship: a test not merely of expertise or depth of insight, but lexical charisma, narrative skill, entertainment. It is a consequence-free existence, one in which the argument itself is the point. When Smith criticised England’s management for not giving Craig Overton a Test debut sooner, as he did in a Sunday Times column last December, there was no obligation to consider the implications of what that would have meant in practice. Now, all of a sudden, Smith will be accountable. He will stand or fall not on the persuasiveness of his decisions, but on their effectiveness.

The main areas of contention are the top order, the back-up fast bowling and - in the absence of Jack Leach due to a broken thumb suffered on Monday - the frontline spinner. In all, only seven names can be predicted with anything like certainty: Joe Root, James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Dawid Malan and Alastair Cook. The time for Cook’s place to be called into question may well come at some point this summer, but given he scored 244 not out three Tests ago, and has made runs for Essex, even a free-thinker like Smith would not consider jettisoning him now.

Mark Stoneman, however, is more vulnerable. A Test-best 60 in Christchurch was outweighed by yet another dismissal when well set, and two dropped catches that probably cost England the Test. Root and Trevor Bayliss will be loath to make yet another change at the top of the order - a festering sore for England ever since Strauss’ retirement six years ago - but his time has come. Middlesex’s Nick Gubbins, Lancashire’s Keaton Jennings and Stoneman’s Surrey team-mate Rory Burns will all be in the frame to replace him.

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James Vince’s epic century for Hampshire against Somerset on Monday - his first in 55 innings in all forms of cricket - could scarcely have been better timed. There remain legitimate questions over Vince’s temperament and his ability to score with the heaviness required of a Test No 3 - it’s been four years since he averaged 35 in a first-class season - but when you add his 76 in Christchurch to his 83 at Brisbane, there may be just enough there for England to keep the faith, although you wonder if his long-term home may be further down the order.

If Vince is dropped, then one option is for Root or Malan to take the No 3 spot and Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes to move to No 5 and No 6 respectively, allowing a new batsman to bed in further down the order. Liam Livingstone was the reserve batsman in New Zealand and in a team run on loyalty and brute logic, that would probably give him the edge again here, even if Worcestershire’s Joe Clarke, Surrey’s Ollie Pope and even Somerset’s veteran charmer James Hildreth all have decent claims.

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So too another Surrey man: Ben Foakes, who could either take the gloves from Bairstow - although certainly not with Bairstow’s approval - or play as a specialist batsman lower down the order. And is it fanciful to throw in the name of perhaps the most in-form English batsman of the moment? Jos Buttler, who has just tied Virender Sehwag’s long-standing record of five consecutive half-centuries in the IPL: your country needs you. Even if your country hasn’t quite recognised it yet.

The third seamer will probably be between Chris Woakes, Mark Wood and Craig Overton, although Jake Ball remains tantalisingly perched on the periphery. Here, we will get perhaps the keenest insight into the thinking of England’s management. Are they picking an attack to bowl out Pakistan in home conditions in May? Or are they trying to build a team to take on India, the world’s No 1 side, later this summer, and beyond that the tour of Sri Lanka? If it’s the latter, then you would lean towards Wood or Ball, Division One’s leading wicket-taker.

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Leach’s injury would appear to clear the way for Moeen Ali to make a quick return to the side after being dropped in New Zealand. But Moeen has spent most of the last few weeks not playing Twenty20 for Royal Challengers Bangalore rather than playing red-ball cricket for Worcestershire. He deserves a longer break to get his game in order before being thrown back into the side. There has been a good deal of buzz about Amar Virdi, Surrey’s teenage off-spinner who has taken 17 wickets already this season, and given that spin may play only a pivotal role in the game itself, it may be worth including him in the squad and bringing him along for experience.

“Who is on the field is the most important part of any team strategy,” Smith wrote earlier this year, and it is perhaps a minor irony that the man now in charge of selecting the England team has spent a good part of the last few years critiquing that very selection in print. In his most recent columns Smith urged England’s selectors to take risks, to embrace change, to shake things up, even at the risk of unpopularity. Now he has the keys to the team itself, it remains to be seen whether the boldness of his rhetoric will be reflected in deed.

Probable squad: Cook, Gubbins, Vince, Root, Malan, Stokes, Bairstow, Woakes, Overton, Wood, Broad, Anderson, Virdi