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England’s Ashes tour met its first speed-bump since arriving on Australian soil with the news that Moeen Ali and Steven Finn will undergo scans on injuries on Friday, and will not play a part in this weekend’s opening tour match against a West Australian XI at the Waca Ground on Saturday.
Moeen has suffered pain in his left side in recent days so sat out the squad’s centre-wicket practice at Perth’s Richardson Park, while Finn injured his left knee batting in the nets. Both scans will take place on Friday afternoon.
While neither injury is at this stage considered tour-ending, Moeen’s is the more worrying. Not only is he an important player for England – particularly in the absence of Ben Stokes – but he has also suffered side strains before, notably in 2015 when he missed the final game of England’s disastrous World Cup campaign and was a doubt for the Lord’s Ashes Test with the same injury.
Ahead of the first Test, England have two further tour matches after this weekend’s two-dayer. They play Cricket Australia XIs in Adelaide from Wednesday and Townsville from 15 November. Both games are first-class, four-day games for which CA have named their 12-man squad.
Tim Paine, the former Test wicketkeeper, is the wise head in a young squad that will be coached in Adelaide by Australian internationals Ryan Harris and Chris Rogers, with former England batsman Graeme Hick and former England bowling coach Troy Cooley taking over for the Townsville game.
CA XI: Jake Carder (WA), Jackson Coleman (Vic), Michael Cormack (SA), Daniel Fallins (NSW), Ryan Gibson (NSW), Nick Larkin (NSW), Simon Milenko (Tas), Tim Paine (Tas), Will Pucovski (Tas), Gurinder Sandhu (NSW), Jason Sangha (NSW), Matthew Short (Vic)
(THE GUARDIAN)
