{"id":325407,"date":"2025-12-03T17:41:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T17:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/325407\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T17:41:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T17:41:14","slug":"bashir-is-englands-no-1-spinner-despite-exclusion-from-ashes-test-says-stokes-ashes-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/325407\/","title":{"rendered":"Bashir is \u2018England\u2019s No 1 spinner\u2019 despite exclusion from Ashes Test, says Stokes | Ashes 2025-26"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shoaib Bashir has been reassured that he remains England\u2019s first-pick spinner, despite Will Jacks being selected<\/a> for the second Ashes Test in Brisbane. On the eve of the game Ben Stokes said the decision had been made because of the unique challenges of a day-night match at the Gabba and Jacks\u2019s greater quality with the bat<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to look at how we thought spin was going to be used, and there was a bit of a tactical element to it,\u201d Stokes said. \u201cJacksy\u2019s ability with the bat, to have that down the order for us is useful as well. But if it ever comes down to picking our best, No 1 spinner, selection will go the other way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought this was the best XI for the conditions and the circumstances of the game, but he knows that if it comes down to picking our best spinner, he\u2019s the man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bashir will play for the Lions in their unofficial Test against Australia A that starts in Brisbane on Friday. Jacob Bethell will also be getting match practice in the game.<\/p>\n

Jacks has been selected in place of Mark Wood in the only change to the team that lost the first Test in Perth inside two days. Wood has been sidelined because of soreness in the left knee<\/a> that required surgery this year, but remains with the squad. He hopes to play some part in the series, with the third match in Adelaide a fortnight away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of a setback, but we\u2019re doing everything we can and the medical group are doing everything they can to try and get him to potentially be available for selection in the last three,\u201d Stokes said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot more time to go on this tour and we\u2019ll just see how things play out with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick GuideTeams for second TestShow<\/p>\n

England (confirmed): Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Will Jacks, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer <\/p>\n

Australia (possible): Travis Head, Jake Weatherald, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith (c), Josh Inglis, Cameron Green, Alex Carey (wk), Mitchell Starc, Scott Boland, Brendon Doggett, Nathan Lyon <\/p>\n

Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n

Stokes also paid tribute to the former England batter Robin Smith who died on Tuesday<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t know him overly well,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I knew quite a lot of people who did know him very well, who played a lot of cricket with him, and the same thing kept on coming up, which was just that he was an absolute belter of a bloke.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was around in Perth and he spoke to the Lions. News like that hits you a bit harder when you know that just last week he was there chatting with the Lions, that he was at the game, talking to people and going into quite a lot of detail about his life and opening up quite a lot. It hits a bit harder when you realise it was only a week ago he was doing those kinds of things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shoaib Bashir has been reassured that he remains England\u2019s first-pick spinner, despite Will Jacks being selected for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-325407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}