VIDEO STAR BASHIR SPINS ENGLAND TO SERIES WIN
Evening Standard|July 22, 2024
ENGLAND’S best-laid plans are working. For all the talk of a data revolution in cricket, England have a captain in Ben Stokes who believes in his gut instinct as much as what the numbers may say.
Cameron Ponsonby
VIDEO STAR BASHIR SPINS ENGLAND TO SERIES WIN

In England’s 241-run win here yesterday, 20-year-old Shoaib Bashir became the youngest-ever player from these shores to take a five-wicket haul on home soil, something that Stokes insisted was not an “I-told-you-so” moment, after he plucked Bashir from obscurity last summer off the back of a social media video, until he conceded with a smile that, “it sort of [also] is”.

Much has been made of Bashir’s high release-point. At 6ft 4ins, the theory went that he had been selected for the India Test series earlier this year through data and science. How else could a 20-year-old with only six first-class appearances to his name be picked? But then the truth emerged. Stokes had seen a clip online of Bashir bowling on his first-class debut to Alastair Cook, and liked what he saw.

“I’m in a WhatsApp group with Keysy [Rob Key] and Baz [Brendon McCullum],” Stokes said in February. “I forwarded the clip and said, ‘Have a look at this, this could be something we could work with on our India tour’ and it just progressed from there.” Bashir, who is second-choice at his county Somerset, where former England spinner Jack Leach is picked ahead of him, has taken three five-wicket hauls in his first five Tests for England — the same number that Andrew Flintoff managed across his career.

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