Stokes and Moeen - England's core

Allrounders have been highly sought after throughout cricket's history, so England can consider themselves blessed to have two at the same time. Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali - Nos. 4 and 5 on the ICC's Test rankings for allrounders - would both merit places in the side as batsmen or bowlers. That they are a seam-spin bowling duo means England will never be short of options to pick up 20 wickets in a Test match, wherever they play.

In the 31 Tests these two have played together, Moeen and Stokes have won four Man of the Match and two Man of the Series awards each. No other England player has won more. Both of them have five hundreds each - only once have they got tons in the same game - and bagged a combined 14 four-wicket hauls - they've never taken five-wicket hauls in the same Test. Their batting and bowling averages are all clustered around the 34 - 37 region. They still have negative differences between their batting and bowling averages, though, so there's work to be done before they can vie for a place among Test cricket's "greats".

Neither of them have pulled off a Botham-esque hundred and a five-for in a single Test yet, and England's other issues mean they still lose a number of games despite significant contributions from the duo. Yet, their stature as two of the world's best at the moment is proven by the fact that they are among only four allrounders to do the 1000 runs - 50 wickets double since Moeen's debut in 2014. If the bar is raised further to 2000 runs and 100 wickets, we are left with a single entry: Moeen Ali.