Why India and Virat Kohli should be worried about Shane Warne-mentored Shoaib Bashir, England’s wildcard player

England, on Monday, announced their 16-man squad for the impending five-match Test series that begins early in 2024 in India. For the much-anticipated contest, dubbed as the "hardest" challenge for Bazball thus far, England picked four frontline spinners. Jack Leach has returned from his stress fracture, Rehan Ahmed has been called back while two uncapped options have been considered as well - left-arm spinner Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir, the 20-year-old Somerset offspinner. Hartley did make his ODI debut for England earlier in September this year, but Bashir is yet to earn his international cap.

Who is Shoaib Bashir?

Forget the international stage, for Bashir, the whole set-up of professional cricket is absolutely brand new. He only signed his first professional contract before the start of the 2023 domestic season and later made his debut in June for Somerset. He picked 10 wickets in six first-class appearances an average of 67.00. Overall, he has made 18 County appearances during the period, picking three wickets in seven List A matches and four wickets in five T20 games. Bashir's breakthrough performance came however during the recent England Lions' training camp in the UAE, where he finished with 6 for 42 in a three-day match against Afghanistan A.

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'We’ll hopefully see a world-class spinner in the future'

As much as Bashir's maiden call-up was surprising, the non-selection of Liam Dawson was even more troubling. The slow-left-arm orthodox spinner picked 49 wickets for Hampshire in this season of County Championship, while also scoring three centuries. England should have gone with the experience and all-round ability in Dawson than with the inexperience in Bashir.

However, Rob Key, England's director of cricket, revealed that Bashir's natural attributes forced the selectors to look beyond his modest domestic numbers. He said: “We saw him last summer and every now and again you just catch a glimpse of a couple of balls where you think, ‘hang on, there’s something different there’ or ‘that looks special’. So we saw him in county cricket, we saw the way the way that he bowled the ball, then you see the potential and then you try and find out a little bit about his character.

“Then we had him on the Lions [tour]. Myself and Brendon [McCullum, England head coach] flew out to that Lions camp for about a week and a bit, and we tried to put them in conditions that are similar to what we’re going to see [in India]. Someone like Bashir, you think his ceiling is really high. Life’s always about how good someone’s ‘good’ is not how bad their ‘bad’ is. He’s very raw. He’s going for experience as much as anything else, albeit we won’t be afraid to play him if required. I think that this is the start of his journey where we’ll see, hopefully, a world-class spinner in the future.”

What about the Shane Warne connection?

Moments after the big announcement on Monday, Rajasthan Royals put out a post with a picture of Bashir alongside the late great Shane Warne. The youngster was part of a Rajasthan Royals camp in the UK few years back when got the chance to pick Warne's brain after bowling a few deliveries under his watchful presence.

"One of my highlights of training at the Royals Academy UK was meeting and talking to the great Shane Warne. I was lucky enough to bowl a few balls while he was watching and he gave me a few valuable tips!" Bashir was quoted in the post.

Why should India and Virat Kohli be worried about Shoaib Bashir?

India, historically, have struggled against debutant spinners on home turf. Remember Jason Krejza? He only played two Test matches for Australia in his career, with the debut being against India in Nagpur in 2008, a side that had boasted of a batting line-up comprising the Fab Five along with Murali Vijay as the opener and captain MS Dhoni at No. 7. Despite the efforts going in vain, Krejza picked up 12 wickets in the match - eight in first innings, four in the second - which included the dismissals of Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly (2) and Dhoni.

The element of unknown wrecked havoc yet again earlier this year at the very venue where Krejza picked a 12-fer 15 years back. Todd Murphy, also a right-arm offbreak bowler, was handed his Test debut in the opening game of the Border-Gavaskar Test series on February 9 and showed his true colours on the following day when he picked seven wickets. Although it was another effort gone in vain, few days later, on a contentious Indore track, left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann, playing his second game in the series, inspired Australia to a nine-wicket win with his first-innings fi-fer.

Kohli has even a bigger concern awaiting given his luckless run against debutants. 11 times he has been dismissed in a Test match by a debutant, four of them were spinners, all at home. While Glenn Maxwell, his present RCB teammate, was the first ever to enter the list back in 2013, Murphy and Kuhnemann have been the latest additions. The fourth was Senuran Muthusamy of South Africa, who picked just one wicket in his debut game in 2019 in Visakhapatnam, of that of Kohli.