VIDEO STAR BASHIR SPINS ENGLAND TO SERIES WIN

ENGLAND’S best-laid plans are working. For all the talk of a data revolution in cricket, England have a captain in Ben Stokes who believes in his gut instinct as much as what the numbers may say.

- Cameron Ponsonby

In England’s 241-run win here yesterday, 20-year-old Shoaib Bashir became the youngest-ever player from these shores to take a five-wicket haul on home soil, something that Stokes insisted was not an “I-told-you-so” moment, after he plucked Bashir from obscurity last summer off the back of a social media video, until he conceded with a smile that, “it sort of [also] is”.

Much has been made of Bashir’s high release-point. At 6ft 4ins, the theory went that he had been selected for the India Test series earlier this year through data and science. How else could a 20-year-old with only six first-class appearances to his name be picked? But then the truth emerged. Stokes had seen a clip online of Bashir bowling on his first-class debut to Alastair Cook, and liked what he saw.

“I’m in a WhatsApp group with Keysy [Rob Key] and Baz [Brendon McCullum],” Stokes said in February. “I forwarded the clip and said, ‘Have a look at this, this could be something we could work with on our India tour’ and it just progressed from there.” Bashir, who is second-choice at his county Somerset, where former England spinner Jack Leach is picked ahead of him, has taken three five-wicket hauls in his first five Tests for England — the same number that Andrew Flintoff managed across his career.