The majority of England’s centrally contracted players will be available to play for their counties in the early stages of the Specsavers County Championship and the Royal London One-Day Cup this spring.
That means Glamorgan are likely to face Northampton’s Ben Duckett in their opening County Championship match commencing on 7th April at the County Ground.
Moeen Ali however will miss Worcestershire’s Championship match against Glamorgan at The SSE SWALEC on 14 April after an especially busy winter and equally hectic England schedule for the summer of 2017 ahead.
Essex’s return to Division One of the Championship against Lancashire at the Cloudfm County Ground in Chelmsford is set to include an intriguing individual battle between Alastair Cook and James Anderson, with Haseeb Hameed and his fellow Lions tourists Liam Livingstone and Tom Westley also involved.
Moeen Ali, Stuart Broad, Jake Ball, Alex Hales, Steven Finn, Mark Wood, Keaton Jennings, Liam Dawson, James Vince and the Yorkshire quintet of Jonny Bairstow, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, David Willey and the newly-appointed England Test captain Joe Root will also be available to make at least one appearance in the opening three rounds of Championship matches.
Then all of them have been made available for the opening three rounds of matches in the Royal London One-Day Cup, which has been brought forward in the season this year building to a final at Lord’s on Saturday July 1.