At Lord’s, Shoaib Bashir had what Ben Stokes described as a “TFC”. He was a bowler who did not bowl: thanks for coming. When England were in the field during that game they would return to the changing room and Brendon McCullum, the head coach, would jokingly say to Stokes: “This is Bash if you haven’t met him already.
” A hint to give him an over. But Stokes knew that Bashir was not the sort of needy young bowler who required a sympathy bowl at the end of the session to feel involved. Stokes had seen his mental strength when , and when he endured a “strange couple of months” in being forced to go out on loan at the start of this season in search of cricket, because he plays for the same county as his England rival Jack Leach, who spent his Sunday playing for Somerset against Cornwall in Truro.
In the first place, Bashir had shown perseverance in finding his way to Somerset via Surrey, Middlesex and even Berkshire. Just over a week on, Stokes was proved emphatically right, both in selecting Bashir over Leach, and in not worrying about him at Lord’s. Bashir has become the youngest England spinner to take a five-wicket haul at home with five for 41 against West Indies.
He had never even been to Trent Bridge before this week, and now he is the first spinner to take a five-wicket haul in a men’s Test here since Muttiah Muralitharan in 2006. This was Bashir’s third Test five-fer (that is the same number as Andrew Flintoff), but the conditions were nothing like.