Fourth ODI: Sky Sports’ Ian Botham says James Taylor might have booked World Cup ticket

James Taylor’s maiden ODI fifty in England’s six-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka in Colombo could cause the visitors a selection headache for the rest of the series, says Sir Ian Botham.

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Coming in for the suspended Alastair Cook, the Nottinghamshire man scored an impressive 90 batting at No 3 as England posted 266 in their innings.

Despite defeat, Botham thinks whoever is left out for the next ODI in Pallekele on Wednesday – likely making way for the returning Cook – will feel very hard done by.

“The ironic thing is if the captain hadn’t been suspended, Taylor probably wouldn’t have played,” he said. “But he’s ticked all the boxes and might now have booked himself a ticket to the World Cup.

“England will have to make some changes in Pallekele, it’s a big call as to which way they will go.

“It will probably be Alex Hales who misses out again. But I feel that would be very harsh,” added Botham.

“If [Eoin] Morgan hadn’t of got runs (the stand-in captain scored 62), it might have been him who was left out.”

Positives

Morgan was one singled-out for praise by Botham, along with Taylor, Chris Jordan and Steven Finn. Although he does feel there is a problem the bowlers still need to address.

“England will be pretty happy,” he said. “I know they’ve lost, and they’ve got a tough task to get back in the series but there were a lot of positives to come out of today.

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“Where they have to improve though is with extras again. That’s proving to be a bit of a problem this series.

“Also, I think the bowling coach might want to have a little chat with the bowlers generally because they did well today in testing conditions but they keep bowling this variation ball.

“It’s almost that they bowl two dot balls, but then want to try this slower ball out the back of the hand.

“That’s costing England a lot of runs at the moment.”