England captain Jos Buttler felt it was his responsibility to tell his good friend Jason Roy about his snub from the World Cup squad.
Roy was dropped from England’s World Cup squad due to recurring back spasms that prevented him from participating in any of the four recent one-day internationals against New Zealand. This decision was made just two days ago, on September 18th, 2023.
Harry Brook, who had an average performance in the series against New Zealand with an average of just 12.33 in three innings, was chosen to replace Roy. Despite Brook’s lackluster performance, the selectors deemed him a safer bet given Roy’s ongoing injury issues.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Buttler said that it was a difficult call to make to Roy to tell him about his axe from the World Cup squad.
“I don’t think any time is easy,” Buttler said. “It’s part of the job as captain that is not enjoyable, whether they’re great friends or not, it’s not a nice job to do.”
“I certainly feel like it’s my responsibility to give that news. He’s a really great mate of mine, so it was a really tough call to make.”
Despite this, England has left the World Cup door open to Jason Roy as a possible reserve, offering him a glimmer of hope after the “hammer blow” of being axed on the eve of a second successive major tournament.
Buttler feels that Roy would take up this opportunity to be with the squad for the World Cup.
“Jason will be the top-order reserve, absolutely. Harry, we do feel gives us versatility – he can cover one to six in the batting order which is obviously something that’s advantageous in a squad.”
“But good players miss out, it’s the very brutal nature of sport. There’s plenty of people outside the 15 who will have felt that they were in with a really good chance of a spot.”
“It’s a bad headache to have but a good problem as a selection committee when you have a deep pool of players to choose from,” said Buttler.
