Adil The Form Pick But He'll Have To Play Red Ball Next Year, Says Smith

SOMETIMES one moment of magic is all it takes to change the course of a career and Adil Rashid found out last night that his dismissal of the best batsman in world cricket might just have done the trick.

- Peter Hayter

In announcing Rashid’s controversial recall to Test cricket for the first Test against India at Edgbaston, for the first time since the end of the five-match series against them India in December 2016, national selector Ed Smith insisted the Yorkshire leg-spinner was on England’s radar before the start of the recent ODI series.

And he reckoned there was far more than that single, sensational delivery with which he bowled Virat Kohli behind his recall.

But nothing he said to explain the context and the thinking behind picking a player for Test cricket who, to the consternation and apparently continuing irritation of his county, had effectively turned his back on anything but white-ball cricket at the start of this season altered the perception that its impact turned Rashid from someone who they would quite like to be available to someone they simply had to pick.

And not just for the rest of this summer, but also for the winter tours to Sri Lanka and West Indies and this time next year, too.

For obvious reasons, and with the following caustic response from Yorkshire chief executive Mark Arthur ringing in his ears: “I hope England know what they are doing to Adil, and the county game,” Smith took his time, and great care, to tell all about the move to select Rashid alongside Moeen Ali in a 13-man squad for Edgbaston.