In the week he might easily be trying Test whites for size, Shoaib Bashir has been cut down, a 20-year-old sent home with a dream on hold, the victim in a game of power that only one side has the appetite to play.
That India, red-hot favourites to dish out a thrashing across five upcoming Tests, has decided to flex its muscle in this way is bizarre but also not entirely unexpected; a rookie who had not even stepped into first-class cricket at the start of last summer now the latest cricketer of Pakistani descent to be thrust into an international political storm, all while chasing paperwork across two continents in what must be an overwhelming ordeal.
