The visa row over Shoaib Bashir took a fresh twist on Tuesday when it emerged the young England spinner has been ruled out of the first Test against India starting on Thursday after being forced to return to the UK to gain his approval for travel.
Bashir, 20, was left stranded in Abu Dhabi, where England had held a pre-tour training camp, when his team-mates flew out to India last Sunday ahead of this week’s first Test in Hyderabad after his visa did not come through in time.
Now it has emerged he has been forced to fly home to sort the issue because his presence is physically needed in London to get the necessary approval for travel.
i understands the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are hopeful that if all goes well Bashir, whose parents are of Pakistani origin, will be able to join the rest of the squad in India by the weekend.
But it is understood the ECB are livid with their Indian counterparts and the situation could erupt into a major diplomatic incident if Bashir’s travel plans are delayed further and he is also ruled out of the second Tests that starts in Visakhapatnam on Friday week.
The Somerset spinner, who was born in Surrey, was meant to be enjoying his first senior tour for England.
Instead he has been caught up in red tape, and captain Ben Stokes admits he is “devastated” and “frustrated” over a situation that has left him a player short heading into the five-match series.
“As captain I find it particularly frustrating,” Stokes said. “We announced that squad in mid-December, and now Bash finds himself without a visa to get here.
“I am more frustrated for him. I didn’t want this type of situation to be his first experience of what it’s like to be in the England Test team.
“I feel for him. But he’s not the first cricketer to go through this, I have played with a lot of people who have had the same issues. I find it frustrating that we have picked a player and he’s not with us because of visa issues.
“Especially for a young lad. I’m devastated for him. It’s a frustrating situation to be in, but a lot of people have been trying to get it through. It’s unfortunate and I’m very frustrated for him.”
Bashir applied for his Indian visa hours after he was named in England’s squad on 11 December. But the extra checks required for those with Pakistani heritage complicates the process, with Australia’s Usman Khawaja, born in Islamabad, experiencing a similar delay before his country’s Test series in India last year.
It is understood that Rehan Ahmed, England’s teenage leg-spinner who is also of Pakistani heritage, did not suffer a similar issue because his status as a reserve for last autumn’s World Cup in India meant he had an existing valid visa to enter the country.
Asked if Bashir had been in contention to play in the first Test, Stokes, already without key batter Harry Brook after he flew home for personal reasons, admitted: “Him not being able to be here rules him out. We didn’t come here with preconceived ideas about what we will do with the first team.
“In India you do like to have a good look at the pitch to see how it might play. With Bash unfortunately not able to be here, it rules him out of this game.”
The ECB are understood to have escalated their complaints to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Indian government. Given Jay Shah, the secretary of the BCCI, is the son of Amit Shah, India’s minister of home affairs and the de-facto deputy to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this should have been a simple issue to resolve.
Yet i understands that did not stop the Indian authorities insisting Bashir return to the UK rather than waiting in Abu Dhabi for his visa to come through.
It means rather than making a three-hour flight from the United Arab Emirates to join his team-mates in India, Bashir will have to fly eight hours back to London and then get on a 10-hour flight out to the sub-continent once his visa finally comes through.
