England team’s interim director Andrew Strauss has confirmed that Stuart Broad and James Anderson’s exclusion from the Test squad for the series against West Indies does not signal the end of the road for them.

In a surprising turn of events, ECB announced the squad for the 3-Test series against the Windies without both Anderson and Broad. Despite being their two most successful bowlers in history, the duo was overlooked in favour of grooming youngsters

“In respect of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, I want to emphasise this does not mean the end for them as England players. We feel that it is important to look at some exciting new bowling potential and give some added responsibility to other players who have featured previously.”

“No one doubts the quality and experience that James and Stuart bring to the England set-up. It will be up to the new managing director and permanent head coach to decide on whether they will be involved this summer and beyond,” Strauss told Sky Sports.

“This selection of this squad is the start of a process and a journey to get England Test cricket back to where it needs to be, and the hard work starts now,” Strauss added.

England lost the Ashes series 0-4 but the primary reason for the same was the poor batting. Apart from Joe Root and to an extent, Ben Stokes, none of them had a major role to play. It led to the resignation of Chris Silverwood as the head coach and Paul Collingwood will be the interim head coach for the Windies series.

England squad for Test series in West Indies

Joe Root (c), Jonny Bairstow, Zak Crawley, Matthew Fisher, Ben Foakes, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Alex Lees, Saqib Mahmood, Craig Overton, Matt Parkinson, Ollie Pope, Ollie Robinson, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood.

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