With one of the all-time great Ashes series having come to a fitting close this week, complete with storybook farewell for Stuart Broad, attention has now turned to the Men’s Cricket World Cup, which begins in October this year.
England will head to India looking to defend the crown they won “by the barest of all margins” in 2019, but they will travel with a very different looking squad to the one that was triumphant on home soil. Below we take a look at those World Cup winners, and see what they are up to now.
Jason Roy
Roy hasn’t played a Test match for England since 2019, and it is a move that has helped him hone his craft. Now England’s trusted ODI opener, he and Dawid Malan are set to battle it out for a place opening the batting in India. Roy scored two ODI centuries last winter, and that could be enough to secure him a starting spot.
Jonny Bairstow
The most criticised England player during the Ashes responded in style with fine performances in the final two Test matches. And he’s stll absolutely heroic with the bat. There’s nothing quite like watching Bairstow thump balls to the boundary. More of the same please Jonny.
READ MORE:
- Broad gets fairy tale finish
- Broad's retirement leaves us wanting more
- England 3/1 to win the World Cup*
Joe Root
Still going. Still batting. Root was one of England's best players in the Ashes this summer and is probably more suited to Test cricket, but he still has a part to play this Autumn. Pushed up to number three in the shorter form of the game, Root is trusted to let loose at the top of the order. He’ll be key again for England, as he so often is.
Eoin Morgan
Captain Morgan lifted the biggest prize back in '19 and kept on playing short-form cricket until his retirement last summer. He also captained England to the T20 semi-finals in 2021, before a drastic loss of form led to his retirement in 2022. One of the true greats.
Ben Stokes
Who would have thought England’s talisman on that day in July 2019 would now become Test captain? One of our greatest ever cricketers won the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award back in 2019 but has now turned his attention to captaining the Test side - and he’s doing a bloody good job of it too. He and Brendon McCullum seem to be the perfect match and he insists he will not go to India at this moment of time having retired from the shorter format of the game last summer. That could change as we approach the tournament, however.
Jos Buttler
Another short-form specialist who has left Test cricket behind. Buttler was pivotal to England’s final win four years ago as he hit a quickfire 59 and the new white-ball skipper's middle order partnership with Harry Brook should provide the firepower England need this time around.
Chris Woakes
If Woakes had played all five Ashes Tests, would the hosts have won the series? Quite possibly. That’s how good he was against the Aussies with his clever pace bowling resulting in 19 wickets, the third highest total of the series and enough to win him the official Player of the Series gong. And he only played three matches! He was a key point of attack for England four years ago, and nothing has changed. He’s probably just got even better.
Liam Plunkett
After picking up three wickets in the last final, Plunkett last played for his country in 2019. Instead, he has moved over to the United States where his wife lives, and is one of the big names involved in the launch of Major League Cricket. He even expressed a potential desire to play for the USA national team in the future.
Jofra Archer
The man who bowled the Super Over has had a torrid time with injuries of late and has never quite been the bowler we all thought he would be. The latest elbow stress fracture ruled him out of the summer, but on a positive note he does look like he will be fit by October. Will he be back to his flying best by that point?
Adil Rashid
The first spin bowler to take 150 wickets in ODIs for England couldn’t make any inroads in the 2019 final, but he could be a useful option again on the hard and dry pitches of India. He’s become an ODI specialist in recent years and is ready to cause carnage at another World Cup.
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