(Image source: X.com)
[Saba Sports News] England off-spinner Shoaib Bashir made his Test debut on Monday in the second match of the ongoing series versus India.
He began the day by dismissing India captain Rohit Sharma, providing England their first breakthrough. In the close stages of the day’s play, he outclassed Axar Patel, who became his second victim in the international arena.
Bashir debuted in first-class cricket only six months ago. His performance was ordinary at best. This begs a question on his selection for England.
The answer to this lies in captain Ben Stokes, who saw Bashir bowl to Sir Alastair Cook, legendary England batter, in a video shared by Somerset Cricket on X, formerly Twitter.
In what was Bashir’s first over in FC cricket, Cook was beaten twice.
Shoaib Bashir is bowling for the first time in @CountyChamp cricket and immediately has Cook in trouble. 60/0
LIVE STREAM ➡️ https://t.co/aRtGCP76ez#ESSvSOM#WeAreSomerset pic.twitter.com/bkRuJ4i5Qf
— Somerset Cricket 🏆 (@SomersetCCC) June 11, 2023
This was enough to impress Stokes, who then forwarded this video to a WhatsApp group, having head coach Brebdon McCullum and ECB managing director Rob Key as its members.
“To be perfectly honest, Abu Dhabi was the first real live look I got at Bash. The first time I saw him was on Twitter. I think the County Championship [account] put a little clip together of him bowling against Sir Alastair,” Stokes said as quoted
“I’m in a WhatsApp group with Keysy and Baz. I actually did forward the clip on 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. He got selected on the Lions tour and obviously, the coaches on that tour fed back everything to us,” he added.