By sticking with Shoaib Bashir, England are in thrall to wrong sort of variety

The defining virtue of Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes at the helm of English cricket is their ­radical ­happiness to do things ­differently. Their central insight – and it is a brilliant one – is that, for nigh on a century, Test cricket has been played too defensively. Take more risks, they concluded, because it’s less risky than it seems. Their team is a lot more memorable – and more successful – than most of their predecessors.

Radical innovation can go wrong, though. Shoaib Bashir was selected for England after Stokes saw a social media clip of him dipping an off-­spinner past Sir Alastair Cook in a County Championship match.

Stokes shared the clip on WhatsApp with McCullum and Rob Key, England’s managing director, and, on this flimsy evidence, Bashir was drafted. Rather like Milan Kundera tracing a whole human life from a single ­gesture, a whole ­talent ­encapsulated in a single ball.

Only sport really doesn’t work like that. That’s not a radical departure in selection method; it’s obtuse and unlikely to work. I first saw Bashir bowl last season at New Road. Dan Lawrence took him for 34 in an over. Then, at Taunton on Sunday, I watched him bowl on the outfield during lunch. Bashir had returned from a loan spell in Glamorgan – two wickets for 304 runs in three matches – but couldn’t displace Jack Leach as Somerset’s spin bowler.

The weight of evidence is on Somerset’s side. In 30 first-class games, Bashir has 68 wickets, but they cost him 52 runs each. For England he bowled well, on hospitable pitches, in India but in his last nine Tests, against Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand, his 23 wickets have cost 50 a piece.

Bashir is only 21. I don’t intend to write him off, but it does seem a stretch to say, as McCullum did, that he is a world-class spinner in the making. On the evidence we have, it already looks unlikely that Bashir will ever fulfil that prediction, and it is all but certain he isn’t ready yet. Bashir is probably not in the top five English spin bowlers. The best is surely Liam Dawson, a Wisden Cricketer of the Year, who has 17 first-class centuries to boot. Cases can be made for Jack Leach, Jack Carson, Matt Parkinson and Farhan Ahmed.

Then there is Pakistan left-armer Zafar Gohar, whose British passport has just been delivered. He should cajole Geoffrey Boycott into the nets, film a jaffa and stick it on Instagram. My own view is that Dawson should play.

But maybe the radicals McCullum and Stokes are being uncharacteristically conventional. They hold to the standard cricketing cliche that a bowling attack, like the music hall, must have variety. Well, let’s try this for a thought: oh no it doesn’t. You might say instead that variety in ­conditions – bounce at Perth, swing at Trent Bridge, turn in Mumbai – requires specialisation in bowling.

Besides, there have been notable bowling attacks which did not care for variety. The great West Indian attacks made up of the likes of Roberts, Holding, Garner, Marshall, Ambrose, Croft and Walsh needed little help from Roger Harper. The South African side of the 2010s, who were ranked No 1 in the world, relied on Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander.

Look closer, though, and you will note that there is plenty of variety in those bowling attacks. Marshall, Roberts, Holding and Garner were ­different heights and bowled ­different lengths with different use of swing and seam position.

Sam Cook, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue all bowl right-handed at faster than medium, but there the ­similarity ends. If they can ever get any of them fit, England have a ­surfeit of plausible quick bowlers, and it is not obvious which will emerge through the Indian series as prime candidates for the Ashes at the end of the year. So use the summer to find out and don’t waste a place in the team on the false virtue of variety.

Photograph by Harry Trump/Getty Images