Rebuilt Bashir smiling again and deserves England second chance

“Honestly?” says Derbyshire head coach Mickey Arthur, chatting about his – and England’s – offspinner Shoaib Bashir. “I absolutely adore the bloke. He’s cricket mad, he’s so good to have around and I can’t talk more highly about him. It’s been a match made in heaven.”

For the first time in his career, the 22-year-old Bashir is putting together what could be described as a “normal” cricket season. A unanimously popular person, Bashir’s progress as a player has been a case study of one.

Released by Surrey as a teenager, he made his way to Somerset via Berkshire, where in his first professional appearance, he bowled a spell to Alastair Cook that was clipped up, posted online and seen by Ben Stokes.

“I’m in a WhatsApp group with Rob Key and Brendon McCullum,” Stokes said at the time. “I 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 so, aged 20 and with only 10 first-class wickets to his name from six matches, Bashir was picked for England’s tour of India.

England are at pains to say it wasn’t that simple. That there was a Lions training camp in the middle where Bashir impressed, and that further analysis from various scouts, coaches and players paved the way for the selection. But nevertheless, it was as rapid an ascent as they come.

So too, however, was the fall. After two years of being in the team and being primed for the Ashes, Bashir was deemed borderline unselectable when England did reach Australia. Whacked in the warm-up matches, and in the nets, Bashir had also carried the ignominy of being England’s first-choice spinner, but second for his then county, Somerset, and at times even third choice. In domestic cricket, he averaged about 80 with the ball. Surrey’s Dan Lawrence once hit 38 runs off a Bashir over, including five sixes in a row.

The result was a lingering question that hung over England’s offspinner: “Is this guy actually any good?”

“In my mind he’s the best offspinner in England,” says Arthur, a legendary, cheerful coach whose career has seen him take charge of South Africa, Australia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka across the last two decades.  “I was keen to get him because we’ve got a project and we’re very ambitious. And for Shoaib I knew he was looking for a county, I knew he needed an opportunity, he needed to play, and what I’ve found with Shoaib is just such a wonderful person. And he’s a better bowler than I thought he was.”

Bashir’s start to life at Derbyshire has been a happy one. For a cricketer screaming out for experience, he has bowled the most overs of any spinner in the country. His tally of 15 wickets makes him the leading spinner in Division Two, while his average of 37.6 and economy rate of 2.8 are both more than respectable for what is to be expected of a slow bowler given conditions at this time of year. The result is he has once again been selected for England’s Test squad.

“He challenges both edges, he’s tall, he gets really good bounce,” Arthur says. “He’s everything and more than I thought we were getting.”

Following the Ashes, Bashir worked with the former Pakistani spinner Mushtaq Ahmed and has carried those changes into life at Derbyshire where their goal has been to take a young spinner who can bowl the best ball in England, to a young spinner who can bowl the best spells. “It’s not rocket science,” Arthur says. “Just very, very small tweaks.”

Bashir has added a skip to the beginning of his run-up to help give him more momentum. He is bowling more centrally on the crease, which Arthur believes “straightens him up a little” and allows him to “get through his action a lot more”.

“Tactically, we’ve done quite a bit of work with him on fields,” he says. “And I quite like the fact we’ve got him coming around the wicket a bit more when the pitch isn’t turning.”

Over the last couple of years the anecdotes about Bashir lined up in a similar direction. Players would see his best ball, and go “I get the hype”, but given his youth and inexperience, they also saw a spinner who lacked an understanding of his craft.

“You look at the amount of first-class games he’s played [41],” says Arthur. “And coming into the season more than half of it was Test cricket. So he’s learned by playing at the highest level, which has been tough.

“So it’s been really good just to give him the opportunity to bowl. Give him the opportunity to find out about his action, find out about angles, find out about change of pace and also tactically to work out what each situation requires right now.”

The temptation for many would have been to leave him be. Let him continue to flourish in his new life at Derbyshire and return to England in a year or two as a man who is ready rather than a boy still learning.

Arthur, however, sees it differently.  “I’ve seen a lot of cricketers,” he says. “And he’s definitely good enough. He’s the best offspinner in England, so he should be playing for England.”

Photographs by William West/AFP