24 January 2024 , 14:35
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England should have refused to set foot in India until young spinner Shoaib Bashir's visa was issued.
Just because the Delhi government have buckled and finally granted Bashir entry - after six weeks of messing him around - doesn’t make it all right. The whole episode was a grubby little stunt which probably denied a 20-year-old lad his Test debut in Hyderabad this week.
England captain Ben Stokes revealed the squad had discussed not flying to India until Bashir was cleared to travel with them. What a shame they didn’t call the Indians’ bluff and sit tight on the Arabian peninsula, where England had been preparing for the tour in Abu Dhabi.
Bashir’s visa was delayed because of his Pakistani heritage. It’s not the first time India have made life difficult for a visiting cricketer on spurious grounds of his ancestry. Australia's Usman Khawaja, also of Pakistani descent, was a late arrival for last year’s Test series in India.
But if the roles had been reversed, and the Home Office had singled out an Indian cricketer by refusing him entry to the UK for a Test match tour of England, it would have been a diplomatic incident. Tensions remain high between India and Pakistan, but why should that preclude a British citizen born in Chertsey from playing cricket?
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England named their tour squad back on December 11. More than six weeks later, the Indian government was still finding weasel excuses not to admit Bashir until they sensed the gathering clouds were about to become a storm. But they relented too late to give Bashir a chance of playing in the first Test.
First he was left behind in Abu Dhabi and then he had to return to England because the Indian authorities insisted his paperwork had to be processed in London. As if by magic, once it was too late for Bashir to play in Hyderabad, his visa was duly processed. Fancy that - how convenient.
And what a disgraceful way to treat a 20-year-old lad whose first experience of being an England cricketer will now be remembered as a hostage of jumped-up immigration posturing.