Good chance to see fresh faces, says England opener Jason Roy

SOUTHAMPTON: England opener Jason Roy has said the Ireland ODI series will give the team an opportunity to check out new faces in the ranks with an eye on the T20 World Cup, which has now been postponed to next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will be a young England side led by Eoin Morgan which will take on Ireland with many first team stars like Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Jofra Archer rested after the West Indies Test series.

Speaking to Rob Key on the latest edition of the Sky Sports Cricket podcast, the Surrey batsman said: "We've obviously got the T20 World Cup to work towards [in 2021] and then we want to go on and win the following World Cup.

"This Ireland series is giving us an opportunity to see a lot of young players — Tom Banton, Saqib Mahmood and other players coming through and ones who haven't got a chance in the past.

"It's another opportunity to see the raw talent coming through. The talent in the squad that we got together for the training camp before the cut for this ODI series was scary," said Roy, an ODI World Cup winner with England on home soil in 2019.

"It was just so good to watch; that would have been a stinking job for the selectors to select out of that. It must have been so difficult.

"The process is the same again as it was for the last four years — build those foundations and then find what works."

Roy said the T20 World Cup is at the forefront of England's plans going ahead.

"The T20 World Cup is probably at the forefront of our minds. But I think we do quite well as a squad to separate all of the three-forms. But for the time being we just want to win this series now." (IANS)

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