Keaton Jennings assured for final Test vs South Africa; not certain for The Ashes 2017

Keanton Jennings has been in woeful form in the ongoing Test series versus South Africa.

After an impressive debut against India in 2016, England‘s Keaton Jennings finds himself in a fix. The left-hander has been in woeful form in the ongoing four-Test versus South Africa. He, however, is assured of a place for the final Test at Manchester, but Trevor Bayliss has hinted of carrying two or three openers for upcoming Ashes 2017-18. This puts Jennings in a peculiar position and needs to score a big in the last Test, starting from August 4. England, with a 239-run win over South Africa in the third Test, lead the series 2-1.

After managing just 3 runs in the previous three innings, Jennings scored a determined 48 in the second innings of the penultimate Test versus South Africa. Nonetheless, Bayliss does not seem very impressed with the young lad for future tours. “It could be two or three guys (partnering Cook). When we go to Australia, we’ll probably take more than a couple of openers, so it could be a number of those guys get a look in,” Bayliss told BBC Sport after Monday’s thumping over Proteas.

Graeme Smith, former South Africa skipper, also called for Jennings exit from the team. “Even though he got 48, there were a lot of edges. If I was a selector I’d be thinking it was time to make a change with the West Indies and then the Ashes coming up. Should England give another player time to settle in? The way that Jennings plays, I think Australia might be quite a scary place for him”, quoted Smith.

Jennings has amassed 92 runs at 15.3 in his last 6 Test innings; including a scratchy 48 in his last outing. He was dropped once, survived a review and played a series of unconvincing boundaries before falling to a short ball from Kagiso Rabada.