EXCLUSIVE: Shoaib Bashir - the rise and rise
"I've never been a part of anything like it, really. I absolutely love playing under them"
Stop Press. Cider Press have an exclusive interview with Shoaib Bashir for you - well worth the subscription fee we’re sure you will agree! Thanks to Bash for his time and to Spenny Bishop at Somerset CCC for arranging.
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Shoaib Bashir is not a young man normally afflicted by nerves. His relaxed, affable manner is not a façade - it is how Bashir is, and, along with an extraordinary skill set, is one of the reasons he is so well-thought of both within the England and Somerset set-ups.
But 2nd February 2024 was no ordinary morning. “I’m a practising Muslim and I woke up at about 3am to pray,” Bashir tells Cider Press, voice noticeably increasing in cadence.
“And I just couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m lying there thinking ‘later today, I’m going to be playing for my country. I’m going to have the England badge on my shirt and I’m going to be walking out with Stokesy and Joe Root. Those are crazy, crazy feelings.”
With all that whirling around the brain, it is unsurprising Bashir caught no further shut eye. An England Test debut is in of itself enough to break one’s Circadian Rhythm: chuck in being a junior spinner with just 10 red-ball wickets and 203 overs on the old CV, and it is a wonder Bashir got any kip at all.
Readers of this page will know full well that Bashir’s nerves served him well. A four wicket debut; a rest; eight wickets in his second Test, including a maiden five-fer. Dreamland?
“Life's been pretty special,” he begins. A pause allows Bashir’s pupils to dilate further still. “It's been a bit of a rollercoaster, a lot of ups, just living the dream really. Ever since I started playing cricket, the dream was to play for England and represent my country, and now that I'm there, I’m soaking it all in.”
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The word ‘no’- or, as Bashir puts it, a variety of “cut-offs” - was a theme of his youth career. It is a well-worn story now, the crux of which is that, in 2021, Surrey decided Bashir would progress no further than their under-18s.
Initially, there was a lack of interest from other first-class counties, with Bashir’s route to Taunton coming via time with Berkshire. His off-spin ripping through a Somerset youth side was the catalyst for what followed.
Bitterness often follows rejection, but not for Bashir. “I think you do think about it,” he responds when asked if his thoughts still wander back there. “But, at the same time, I think if that didn't happen then I probably wouldn't be where I am right now. That built my character a little bit. It made me tougher as a person and I wanted to prove people wrong.
“I think as I’ve grown, that element has come out of me a little bit. It's just part of the journey and everyone has their own journey. I think mine was a bit unique.
“At times you get people who sort of break under those ‘No’s but I think they are what boosted me to work even harder and to get to a position where I can look back and say, ‘I worked hard, and I didn't regret anything or any of the decisions made.’”
One man who embraced Bashir was Sid Lahiri – now part of the Rajasthan Royals’ set-up and a coach Jos Buttler recently credited with helping shift his batting mindset.
“I just used to say to him to turn me into more of a batter! I wanted to be able to be someone who just whacks it. And he saw something in my bowling and kept telling me to bowl in a lot of the sessions.
“I used to have an hour with him, so I wanted every part of the hour just with my batting and he'd be like ‘oh no, you need 15 minutes to bowl.’ I was like ‘I want to be able to contribute with the bat a little bit and hit some bombs!’ He's a top man.”
Now Ben Stokes is a huge Bashir admirer. And yet, but for social media’s power, the England men’s Test skipper may still have been in the dark as to Bashir’s talent. It was June 2023 at Chelmsford when Bashir made his first-class debut. A couple of deliveries that turned sharply past the outside edge of Alastair Cook were clipped up by Somerset’s social media team and went viral. Stokes speaks openly about how that was the first Bashir came to his attention.
Have the pair talked about it? Bashir laughs. “No, he's not mentioned it to me. I know what it's like and that social media clip was crazy for me, actually. I've got social media, but I don't really use it that much and then I remember seeing that clip.
“It was a life-changing couple of balls, really. To be fair, I never thought I'd ever bowl at Alastair Cook, so even that was special. I think that was my first few balls.”
Video courtesy of Somerset County Cricket Club’s X account
In June, Bashir went viral again, but this time he played second fiddle to Dan Lawrence who took 38 runs from an over he bowled. The first five balls went for six. It was, for 48-hours, the joint-costliest over in the history of English first-class cricket. Louis Kimber soon scored 43 from six Ollie Robinson deliveries.
Bashir’s grin again appears when it is brought up. “For the first one, he got dropped at mid-on – that wouldn’t have been six and he would have been out. So, I was laughing inside. But yeah, the over obviously went for, was it 38 in the end? But I just put it to the side, and I was like ‘he's never going to ever do that again’. We still speak about it – Lozza is a great lad as well.
“It’s never nice going for runs like that, but it was just one of those days where everything was gold for him. Now I look back and laugh because it's gone. These things happen in cricket – that’s what people need to understand.”
When he bowled that over, Bashir was sporting a Worcestershire shirt. He needed to be playing cricket and Somerset had picked Jack Leach as their sole spinner. A short-term loan “was the best option for me,” Bashir says, before addressing the laughable notion that the pair have some sort of rivalry.
“It’s not a rivalry at all. Me and Leachy are very tight and get on really, really well with each other. Obviously, I hear the noise about whatever it may be. I think we're so tight that we understand each other's emotions very well.
“Leachy is a legend. He passes on a lot of feedback to me. He helps me with my bowling. He’s even asked me for advice at times, which is class. Our friendship is something that I'll cherish for a long time.”
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Bashir has gone from virtually unknown to seemingly un-droppable in half a World Test Championship cycle. Stokes and Brendon McCullum speak gushingly of him, with the latter describing Bashir as “a gun” after the recent Test series victory over the West Indies.
Stop and think about that. Go on. Just for a second. A kid who had never played four-day cricket last May is now, the following August, his country’s main spinner. Incredible.
So, what has Bashir learned? “Well, first of all, I think that the learning never stops,” he stresses. “But what I've learned so far is more about my character. I think as a spinner, you've got to have a big heart. You've got to be able to deal with pressure situations very well. One thing I've learned is that getting hit for boundaries shouldn't be an issue – so long as you're still trying to take wickets and put the batters under pressure.”
Sometimes that is easier said than done. Like out in India when Yashavi Jaiswal was “churning out” runs. “There was a stage where I was thinking ‘I don't know how I'm going to get him out here.’ I felt like I was bowling with a football. He just saw everything that was coming at him.”
Bashir wasn’t bowling with a football, but he did have an SG ball in hand. “It’s a lot harder than a Dukes,” he explains. “The seam goes on it, so you end up bowling with a dog ball by the end of it. It's a different challenge, but I really enjoyed it.”
How did the fingers stand up to that? “I did get a few bruises on my index finger. I remember Moeen Ali split his finger [in last summer’s Ashes] and I think someone send something random in the post, like honey or something. He tried it on, and it worked! I flippin’ needed that. But you just have to play through it – quick bowlers get stressies and we spinners cut our fingers!”
Speaking to Bashir it is immediately obvious that he was welcomed with wide, outstretched arms the moment he stepped into an England dressing room. He has formed a strong friendship with Joe Root, works closely with Jeetan Patel, and feels able to be his jokey self.
“You hear a lot about how the environment makes a massive difference, and I 100% agree,” he says. “The environment, the way that Baz and Stokesy run the team is incredible. I've never been a part of anything like it, really. I absolutely love playing under them.
“I'm playing for my country, but they don’t make me feel like I am, which is quite nice. They take a lot of pressure off my shoulders, so I don't go into games thinking that I need to perform, it just happens. Riding the wave with them is incredible.”
Sam Dalling