A few people might be batting for Adil Rashid to be given an opportunity to make his test debut in Cardiff, but, England would perhaps be better off playing Moeen Ali.

The reason is that Australia would surely have both the Mitchells in the playing XI and both are left arm pacers.

So, bowling over the wicket, they would definitely be making the area outside the off stump of the right handers slightly weary and that would help the off spinners in the second innings.

Also, Moeen is a better batsman than Rashid. He is a proper top 6 player in domestic circuit and he had actually broken into the England side as a specialist batsman first up.
It was when he got a few wickets in the India series last year; the media and the experts started paying attention to his bowling potential.

It was earlier known that he could bowl a bit, but, he was not believed to be good enough to make that sort of impact at the test level.

However, since the India series, Moeen has not been getting too many wickets and people have started wondering if he was a ‘one series wonder’.

Moeen actually doesn’t have a classic off spinning stock delivery. He spins the ball a little bit, but, not that much. The real thing in his bowling is that beautiful dip that he gets in the air. That deceives the batsman.

He bowls fast as well at times, close to 95 K per hour and it is not easy to dance down the pitch to him.

It remains to be seen though if Alastair Cook backs him. Rashid’s showings in the recent One Day Internationals are not easy to overlook.

Moeen has taken 33 wickets in his test career so far.