{"id":130177,"date":"2025-05-25T08:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/130177\/"},"modified":"2025-05-25T08:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T08:24:09","slug":"shoaib-bashir-is-englands-greatest-gamble-heading-into-the-ashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/130177\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoaib Bashir is England’s greatest gamble heading into the Ashes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raw, wayward and incapable of holding an end – yet the young off-spinner is loved by his teammates and can’t stop taking wickets <\/p>\n

TRENT BRIDGE \u2014 Phil Tufnell summed up the enigma that is Shoaib Bashir following the off-spinner\u2019s match-winning six-wicket haul against Zimbabwe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still can\u2019t figure it out,\u201d the former England spinner said on BBC Test Match Special seconds after England\u2019s innings victory was confirmed on Saturday. \u201cShoaib Bashir\u2019s just become a Test match bowler. A lot of that is down to Ben Stokes who gets the best out of him. I can\u2019t understand why he can\u2019t do it against the county batsmen. He seems to love the big stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could just work on that consistency a bit. He just needs to know how to bowl a spell and develop a spell. He is so young and he has bags of talent. He just needs to learn that craft a bit as a spin bowler.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 21 and with more than half of his first-class appearances coming in Test matches, the spinner who was first spotted on an England & Wales Cricket Board app<\/a> is raw, often wayward and incapable of tying up an end during spells.<\/p>\n

The last of those qualities is especially important in away Ashes series<\/a>, an unforgiving stage where Australian batters always look to target opposition spinners and knock them out of the attack.<\/p>\n

This inexperience is why Bashir can\u2019t get into Somerset\u2019s team ahead of Jack Leach, a spinner who knows what it\u2019s like to be taken down<\/a> in Australia. It is also why he was forced to go on loan to Glamorgan at the start of this summer, where he struggled badly, averaging 152 as he took two wickets across two County Championship matches.<\/p>\n

Yet the conundrum of Bashir is that he keeps taking wickets, with this nine-wicket match haul in Nottingham taking his tally to 58 in 16 Tests since his debut in India last year.<\/p>\n

\"NOTTINGHAM,Bashir has the full support of England captain Ben Stokes (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n

This latest star turn at Trent Bridge came a year after he took a rapid five-wicket haul<\/a> at this ground to hurry England to victory against the West Indies. He is now the only England bowler to take four five-wicket hauls before the age of 22. <\/p>\n

He also became the youngest Englishman to take 50 Test wickets during this match. Yet on the other hand, he went 16 overs on the final day of this Zimbabwe Test before bowling a maiden.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that England, led by an ultra-positive captain in Stokes and coach in Brendon McCullum, trust Bashir implicitly. They are asking him to concentrate on producing wicket-taking deliveries rather than stemming the flow of runs.<\/p>\n

Still, it was telling during this week in Nottingham that Bashir\u2019s place was being questioned, most notably by former England captain Michael Vaughan, during discussions about how to fit Jacob Bethell into this England team<\/a> when he returns from the Indian Premier League. The talk was that maybe the part-time spin of Bethell and Joe Root could be enough to cover the absence of a frontline spinner.<\/p>\n

That chat can be put to one side for now. But a poor series against India later this summer might see the argument gain traction again, especially with the Ashes drawing ever closer.<\/p>\n

The trick for England so far has been boosting Bashir\u2019s confidence so much that a bowler who fails to get into his county team is routinely producing wicket-taking spells such as the one we saw on the final day at Trent Bridge.<\/p>\n

Bashir admitted during the Test that being within this ultra-positive England set-up was his \u201chappy place\u201d. This is something former England captain Nasser Hussain pinpointed post-match, saying: \u201cImagine going out on loan, to a completely different environment, team, coaches, he must have felt so good coming back and seeing his mates, that empathy Stokes has with his team, you\u2019ve seen it with Bashir. He loves playing for Stokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The love is mutual, with Stokes saying after the Zimbabwe win: \u201cIt\u2019s scary to think about the stats in his career considering where he was experience-wise before he made his Test debut. So to be where he is now is super, super exciting. I can say it\u2019s impossible for him not to get even better than he is now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it\u2019s an odd story to look at and I understand why some people find that hard to believe but those decisions in terms of who we pick and back are ours to make. If he keeps putting in performances like he\u2019s done this week, hopefully one day it\u2019ll probably make sense as to why we pick him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inspirational powers of McCullum and Stokes will have to be at the peak of their powers if, as now seems likely, Bashir is pitched into this winter\u2019s Ashes.<\/p>\n

Whether he can withstand the pressure of Australia remains to be seen. But there\u2019s no doubt that he has the full backing of the people who really count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raw, wayward and incapable of holding an end – yet the young off-spinner is loved by his teammates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,7504,4884,56969,43786,48605,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-130177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-england-cricket","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-shoaib-bashir","13":"tag-sports-comment","14":"tag-the-ashes-2025-26","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114567516366357861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}