Steve Harmison has picked his England team for the first Test match against South Africa – with no place for Jonny Bairstow.
Bairstow lost his place in the team following a poor run of form during the summer and was not selected for the two Test matches in New Zealand.
He has been included in the 17-man squad for the South Africa tour – with every match exclusively live on talkSPORT 2– but Harmison thinks he will have to bide his time for a chance.
He told talkSPORT: “As much as I want to get Bairstow in the team, I think he is a top player, but unfortunately he is going to have to wait his time.
“He will have to wait for an injury or loss of form.
“He will have to bat wherever that needs to be. If one, two or three fail then he has to go in there and brace it like he did in the one day game and opened the batting and never looked back.
“For me, it has to be Sibley, Burns and Denly. You can’t just jettison people out of the team after two Test matches so Sibley has to play.
Steve Harmison's England team for first Test
- Rory Burns
- Dom Sibley
- Joe Denly
- Joe Root
- Ben Stokes
- Ollie Pope
- Jos Buttler
- Jofra Archer
- Jack Leach
- Stuart Broad
- James Anderson
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“Burns is close to being a top international opening batsman and a boat load of runs would give him the confidence to realise he does belong in international cricket and Denly is the same.
“Root would be four, Stokes then at five and Pope deserves to bat at six. It’s a good place to bat and a good place for a young lad to bat. In the future he has got to have aspirations to bat higher at maybe five and Stokes in at six.
“Buttler at seven and then you have Archer at eight, Leach at nine and then Broad and Anderson. That would be my team for the first Test match.
“Getting the right bowling attack will be key for England. I still think England’s right bowling attack will be Broad, Anderson, Archer, Stokes and probably Leach for the first Test match. I would go that way. Anderson has to come back in because of his experience. Broad bowled well in the Ashes.
“All the seamers looked relatively ineffective in New Zealand. I still think that will be a potent attack, though, and if they go that way I think they will have success early doors.”
England scheduled two tour matches before the first Test on Boxing Day.
The first was a two day match that saw the batsmen retire once they reached 50 and that was something Harmison did not agree with.
He said: “I have been disappointed with the way the warm up games have been structured but there’s not much you can do about it. The thing I don’t like is that I’m seeing batsmen retiring at 50 and that’s not good for me.
“England’s problem is they are not scoring 450 and big hundreds and if you are walking off when you’ve just scored 50, that’s not for me. You have to go and score big hundreds.”