TRENT BRIDGE — Phil Tufnell summed up the enigma that is Shoaib Bashir following the off-spinner’s match-winning six-wicket haul against Zimbabwe.
“I still can’t figure it out,” the former England spinner said on BBC Test Match Special seconds after England’s innings victory was confirmed on Saturday. “Shoaib Bashir’s just become a Test match bowler. A lot of that is down to Ben Stokes who gets the best out of him. I can’t understand why he can’t do it against the county batsmen. He seems to love the big stage.
“He 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.”
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 is raw, often wayward and incapable of tying up an end during spells.
The last of those qualities is especially important in away Ashes series, an unforgiving stage where Australian batters always look to target opposition spinners and knock them out of the attack.
This inexperience is why Bashir can’t get into Somerset’s team ahead of Jack Leach, a spinner who knows what it’s like to be taken down 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.
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.
Bashir has the full support of England captain Ben Stokes (Photo: Getty)This latest star turn at Trent Bridge came a year after he took a rapid five-wicket haul 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.
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.
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.
Still, it was telling during this week in Nottingham that Bashir’s place was being questioned, most notably by former England captain Michael Vaughan, during discussions about how to fit Jacob Bethell into this England team 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.
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.
The trick for England so far has been boosting Bashir’s 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.
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Bashir admitted during the Test that being within this ultra-positive England set-up was his “happy place”. This is something former England captain Nasser Hussain pinpointed post-match, saying: “Imagine 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’ve seen it with Bashir. He loves playing for Stokes.”
The love is mutual, with Stokes saying after the Zimbabwe win: “It’s 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’s impossible for him not to get even better than he is now.
“I know it’s 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’s done this week, hopefully one day it’ll probably make sense as to why we pick him.”
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’s Ashes.
Whether he can withstand the pressure of Australia remains to be seen. But there’s no doubt that he has the full backing of the people who really count.
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