England announced their T20I and ODI squads for the upcoming showdowns against Australia earlier this week and Moeen Ali made the cut for both formats.
The 33-year-old is one of two spinners selected, with leggy, Adil Rashid, also set to feature in both formats.
Yet, is he really deserving of a spot?
Ali is an extremely talented player who has previously produced magical performances for England both in Test and white-ball cricket.
Furthermore, whenever he returns to the County circuit with Worcestershire, he invariably shines with both bat and ball.
However, his contributions have undoubtedly lessened in the international arena in recent times.
He played his part in a World Cup win on home soil last summer, but individually, he didn’t shine.
From his five tournament appearances, Ali scored just 75 runs and took only five wickets.
As an X-factor player, it was understandable that he still had some credit in the bank coming into this summer.
Yet, in three ODIs and two T20Is to date, he’s looked badly out of sorts with the bat and innocuous with the ball.
Against lowly-ranked Ireland, Ali failed to take a wicket across three matches and scored just a solitary run from two innings.
The selectors kept faith ahead of the Pakistan series but the switch to the shortest format hasn’t helped either.
Ali bowled a solitary expensive over across the two opening matches and scored a combined nine runs from the no.5 slot.
Of course, he could go out in the final game of the series, spank it to all parts and pick up a few key wickets.
But key aspects of his career stats show you that in actual fact, those sorts of star performances are few and far between.
Ali averages just 14.65 with the bat in T20Is and almost 50 with the ball from 105 ODIs.
Those numbers should be prompting questions and action on the part of the selectors, but instead, he’s survived the return of a number of Test players to be included against a dangerous Australian unit who will put his bowling under pressure and challenge him with the short ball.
Perhaps the selectors will point to a lack of like-for-like replacements as a determining factor, but Liam Dawson has markedly better List A batting and bowling averages than Ali and can consider himself another player who is extremely hard done by to have missed out.