West Indies vs England 2019: England announce squad for T20I series

England have announced a 14-man squad for the three-match T20I series against West Indies. The management decided to rest some of the key players ahead of the World Cup. The Three Lions have a busy schedule with series against Ireland and Australia as part of the cricket program.

All-rounder Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler will head home after the ongoing ODI series against the Windies. The T20I series starts on March 5th in St Lucia. After a disappointing Test series, the visitors came back to win the 1st ODI by chasing a daunting target of 361.

Jason Roy and Joe Root scored respective hundreds while skipper Eoin Morgan hit a composed fifty. Roy too won't feature in the T20Is as he will fly home for the birth of his first child.

Sam Billings and Dawid Malan have been named in the squad and they will look to make a late bid for their World Cup campaign. Malan, in particular, will be happy to be back in the fold after being snubbed inappropriately. The southpaw has four fifties in five games in this format of the game. He averages 50 in the shortest format and carries a strike rate of 150.60.

It will be refreshing to see Joe Root in the squad as the Test skipper has been mostly out of the team in T20Is. Since the 2016 World T20, Root has appeared in just eight of the 18 matches played by England. The right-hand batsman will look to fine-tune his technique in this format as he looks to take part in the World T20 next year in Australia.

England Squad for T20I series: Eoin Morgan (c), Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow (wk), Sam Billings, Tom Curran, Joe Denly, Alex Hales, Chris Jordan, Dawid Malan, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, David Willey and Mark Wood