England drop Bairstow for NZ Tests

LONDON: England have not included Jonny Bairstow in their Test tour of New Zealand. The squad for the two-Test series features four uncapped players, as announced on Monday.

Openers Zak Crawley (Kent) and Dom Sibley (Warwickshire) earn maiden call-ups, along with the Lancashire pair of fast bowler Saqib Mahmood and leg spinner Matt Parkinson. Surrey batsman Ollie Pope has also earned a recall. Sibley has been the standout batsman in the country, scoring 1,324 Division One runs this summer, with five hundreds and five fifties, a top score of 244 and sitting with an impressive average of 69.68. Crawley, 21, has shown great promise in all formats, with 820 runs and two centuries this year. James Anderson continues to recover from a calf injury and will work towards proving his fitness for the tour of South Africa in December.

Squads: Test squad: Joe Root (c), Jofra Archer, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler (wk), Zak Crawley, Sam Curran, Joe Denly, Jack Leach, Saqib Mahmood, Matt Parkinson, Ollie Pope, Dominic Sibley, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes.

T20I squad: Eoin Morgan (c), Jonny Bairstow (wk), Tom Banton, Sam Billings, Pat Brown, Sam Curran, Tom Curran, Denly, Lewis Gregory, Chris Jordan, Saqib Mahmood, Dawid Malan, Matt Parkinson, Adil Rashid, James Vince.