The England and Wales Cricket Board has made a surprising selection ahead of their first Test match against India. They make a recall to the bowling all-rounder Jamie Overton for the inaugural contest of the 5-match series.

The pacer, with the amount of pace and batting abilities, impressed against New Zealand in whites, but due to injury reasons, he had to spend some hard time outside the field. Like Overton, England cricket had to face multiple injury issues in their first lineup, which forced the selectors to add some new faces in the setup for the India series.

Overton was not in their initial plan; a hamstring injury to his Surrey teammate Gus Atkinson paved a path for Overton to make a Test team return. Atkinson is already ruled out of the match due to injury. Jamie made his only Test appearance in Leeds against New Zealand in June 2022. In that match the Englishman scored 97 in the first innings and bagged a couple of wickets.

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England's selector explained their views about Jamie Overton

In a recent ODI match against the West Indies, the 31-year-old impressed the selectors by taking 3 wickets. He broke his little finger last week during an ODI against the West Indies and missed multiple matches. 

England's selector Luke Wright said about the inclusion in the Test squad, "Jamie showed in white-ball cricket that he's got a huge amount of pace and bounce, and he's a real threat. He's obviously had a taste of Test cricket before and did well, getting some runs, which was great. He's going back to the ground he did well at Leeds, and for us, it's making sure that we've got the options."

England squad for first Test vs India: Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Sam Cook, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Jamie Overton, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wk), Ben Stokes (capt), Josh Tongue, Chris Woakes.