Bresnan, Duckett make the cut for North vs South series

Ben Duckett, the England Lions batsman, and Tim Bresnan, the Yorkshire all-rounder, are among the eight cricketers to have been chosen for the inaugural North versus South series in the United Arab Emirates next year in March.

Earlier this year, Andrew Strauss, managing director of cricket of the England And Wales Cricket Board (ECB), introduced the new concept of identifying the best English players based on their domestic performances and pitting them against each other, thus giving them an opportunity to make it to the England One-Day International squad for the 2017 Champions Trophy and the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup.

As a result, the Professional Cricketers' Association collaborated with the ECB's High Performance Centre to come up with the PCA MVP formula. This formula considers the pitch conditions, the quality of the opposition, runs scored, wickets taken, captaincy as well as strike rates while assigning points to the players.

It was then decided to include the top four players from each region of the Royal London One-Day Cup's MVP rankings for the series in UAE. Based on those rankings, apart from Bresnan and Duckett, Harry Gurney, Liam Dawson, Graeme White, Matt Coles, Lewis Gregory and Tim Groenewald have made the cut.

Duckett's ranking was boosted by his performances in the tri-series featuring Sri Lanka A and Pakistan A. He blasted an unbeaten 163 and followed it up with a brutal unbeaten double hundred a few days later. He also scored another half-century in the series.

Bresnan has been in great form for Yorkshire with both bat and ball recently and had made back-to-back ninety-plus scores in his last two games. Coles, the 26-year-old Kent seamer, shot into contention after picking up 12 wickets in his last three one-day games.

Left-arm seamer Gurney, who has played 10 ODIs for England, expressed delight after making the cut and hopes to play more matches for the national team in the future. "The North v South series is something that there has been a lot of banter about in the dressing room since the start of the competition and as we got close to the end of the group stage I knew that I was there or thereabouts," he said.

"It's a good opportunity for someone like me just to remind the selectors that I can still do it and that I believe that I have still got an awful lot to offer the international game. It's up to me now to persuade them that's still the case."

Groenewald, the 32-year-old Somerset batsman, admitted that he put in more efforts in the last few games after realising that he was in contention. "I had been following the MVP for the last few games when I realised I was in the mix and it put a bit more on the games we had left. I'm really happy to be involved in something like this particularly with it being the first one and it should be a really good tournament.

"It's brilliant how the system has worked giving an incentive from guys outside the England set-up to work for. I am sure there will be some really good players out there, players who will be playing in the next World Cup so it's brilliant to be involved in this tournament."

The rest of the players for the series will be chosen by the England selectors.