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.
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”.
