National selector Marcus North has left the door open for Brydon Carse to feature in England’s upcoming Test series with South Africa after he was included in the Lions squad.
Carse has not been selected in any international set-up since he was handcuffed outside a Derby nightclub in August.
It led to the seamer being dropped from the squad for the second Test of England’s 3-0 win at home to Pakistan with red-ball captain Joe Root admitting the incident left him “hacked off” while white-ball counterpart Harry Brook acknowledged “time away” was required for Carse.
Even though no charges were brought against Carse by Derbyshire Police following an investigation into an alleged assault in connection with the August 23 fiasco, the cricket regulator deemed the 31-year-old had breached the England and Wales Cricket Board’s professional conduct regulations.
However, Carse will travel out to South Africa later in November after being named in the Lions red-ball and white-ball squads for a tour which will run alongside the three-match Test series for Root’s team against the Proteas.
With seamer Josh Tongue set to miss the first Test against South Africa on December 17 due to the birth of his second child, North confirmed “one or two players” from the Lions squad will be drafted into Stephen Fleming’s playing group and did not rule out Carse.
“Obviously in the past few months under investigation, it’s been a time where he has stood back and it’s been a time of reflection,” North confirmed, after England announced a 15-player Test squad which contained Nottinghamshire spinner Liam Patterson-White.
“It’s obviously been a challenging time for Brydon and it’s one we probably haven’t at times felt the demands of playing international cricket and what he was dealing with was necessarily right for Brydon or us.
“There has been several conversations between us, myself, (managing director) Rob Key and other people at the ECB with Brydon over this period and the conclusion is we feel he is in a place where we can introduce him back into an England environment.
“We feel the Lions is the right place for him to come.
“Come that first Test, with Josh Tongue unavailable, that will leave us with 14 players and this is where I feel we’re using the Lions tour to our advantage.
“You can see there is a very strong bowling group that is in the Lions programme and that enables us to no doubt look at where they are at in competition and under training.
“They will be out there from the 25th, the Lions players, with some of our red-ball Test players, Stephen Fleming will be out there at that time and that enables us to be as informed as possible to then bring one or two players across into that Test squad come that first Test.”
England’s 15-player Test squad for South Africa tour: J Root (c), J Archer, G Atkinson, S Baker, J Bethell, H Brook, S Cook, J Cox, B Duckett, E Gay, D Lawrence, L Patterson-White, O Robinson, J Smith; J Tongue.
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