"The first time I saw him....": England skipper Stokes on Shoaib Bashir's inclusion in Test against India

India, 1-0 down in the five-match series, will be taking on England in the second Test scheduled on Friday. Bashir will be making his international debut for England in the match

England Test skipper Ben Stokes revealed how he discovered England's uncapped off-spinner Shoaib Bashir, who is a part of England's squad for the second Test scheduled to start from Friday. India, 1-0 down in the five-match series, will be taking on England in the second Test scheduled on Friday. Bashir will be making his international debut for England in the match.

Despite a limited track record in first-class cricket, which is 10 wickets in six appearances, Bashir impressed in pre-series training camp at Abu Dhabi. Stokes first floated the youngster's name six months back after watching a video of him bowling to England legend Alastair Cook during his first Somerset appearance. "To be perfectly honest, our training camp in Abu Dhabi was the first real live look I got at Bash," Stokes said, according to Sky Sports.

"The first time I saw him was on Twitter. I think the County Championship put a little clip together of him bowling against Alastair. I just saw something. With the height he bowled from, it was very obvious that he put a lot of action, a lot of revolutions, on the ball." "I am in a WhatsApp group with [director of cricket] Rob Key and Baz [McCullum]. So I actually did forward the clip on and said, 'Have a look at this, this could be something we could work with on our India tour'. It just progressed from there," he concluded.

England squad for the second Test: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes, Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, James Anderson. (ANI)