Following the defeat, the England selectors made several changes for the fourth Test; both Barnes and Jessop were left out. MacLaren favoured Jessop's inclusion but the selectors considered him unreliable. Although Barnes was not fully fit, later commentators suggested the selectors omitted him because of MacLaren's actions at Sheffield. A further player was added to the squad in case the pitch was affected by rain before the match, but rather than choosing Haigh, the leading wet-pitch bowler in the country, Hawke insisted that Sussex's Fred Tate was included—critics have suggested that Hawke wanted to prevent Haigh's absence from the Yorkshire team, of which Hawke was captain, given the unlikeliness of the extra bowler being needed. According to the cricket writer Neville Cardus, when MacLaren saw the list of players in the team, he responded: "My God, look what they've sent me". MacLaren was angry with Hawke, and when it rained before the match, included Tate in the final eleven at the expense of George Hirst, a leading all-rounder. Gibson suggests that Tate was included by the selectors only "because they thought MacLaren could not possibly pick him" and so he could not make any further late changes to the team; MacLaren, according to Gibson, in turn included Tate out of spite. Other writers have suggested that MacLaren, as a Lancastrian, preferred a Sussex player to a Yorkshire one.