It was obvious, that England were going to play off-spinner Shoaib Bashir in the second Test at Vizag, after he could not feature in the first, due to some visa issues. But for the ones looking at the bowler’s numbers — Bashir just has 10 wickets from six first-class games — it wasn’t his dismissals that got him the call-up to the national team.
In fact, it was a video that was forwarded on WhatsApp, of him beating Alastair Cook twice, in one over, that brought his selection. As per England skipper Ben Stokes, it was this video, where Bashir was bowling for Somerset against Essex about six months ago, that convinced him and the management to opt for the lanky spinner.
“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 by ESPNcricinfo.
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“I’m in a WhatsApp group with Keysy (Rob Key) and Baz (Brendon McCullum). 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 everything back to us,” Stokes told ESPNcricinfo.
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