Mystifying decision to ditch Rashid (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Mystifying decision to ditch Rashid

11:58am Friday 22nd January 2010 in

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Adil Rashid must be a lousy sandwich maker.

Maybe he can’t pour a cuppa just how the top brass like it. Or he nipped down the shop and came back with the wrong biscuits.

Somehow, somewhere Rashid must have queered his pitch with England.

Why else would he be jettisoned from the Test party for the whistle-stop tour of Bangladesh?

It’s not as if the Heaton lad bowled particularly badly in South Africa. Because he didn’t bowl at all… All right, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He played twice – and went for a whopping 25 in his only over during the Twenty20 intenational at Centurion Park.

I can understand to a degree why, instead of getting his first Test chance, he was then packed off to join the Performance Programme with three other Yorkshire players. But Bangladesh are not South Africa and would have offered far less choppy waters to dip his toe into Test cricket.

Graeme Swann has grabbed his chance as England’s number one spinner but having got the initial nod for South Africa, Rashid should surely get first dibs to bowl at the other end in spin-friendly Dhaka.

While Yorkshire pal Ajmal Shahzad was an eyebrow-raising name among the 16 on the plane, leg spinner Rashid’s omission surely ranks as the biggest surprise.

England said they would take two spinners to Bangladesh and the UAE – and then ignored Rashid to go with two regulation offy bowlers, throwing James Tredwell into the mix.

In doing so, they have lost any variation in the slow-bowling attack – not to mention a decent lower-order batter.

What a crushing blow that must be to Rashid’s confidence.

But it’s been a week of brainless decisions.

I still shudder at the memory of last Sunday morning and Matt Prior ignoring any attempts of a rearguard action in Joburg by swatting his second ball straight up in the air.

And then Andrew Strauss, who had been comprehensively out-captained over the winter by Graeme Smith, decided he needed a break to get over the “rigours” of South Africa.

Apart from metaphorically sticking up two fingers at Bangladesh – who have given India a run for their money in the last few days – Strauss also tossed away a golden opportunity to rack up some much-needed runs.

It’s not just his captaincy efforts that have not been up to scratch; Strauss has struggled with the bat.

For me, he was the man of the series as England overturned the odds to pip Australia last summer, but South Africa has proved another league altogether.

England got hammered 1-1 – and left the country with a load more questions than answers.

Strauss was certainly not the only one to find the home bowlers too hot to handle but surely, as with the woefully-misfiring Kevin Pietersen, that’s even more reason to fine-tune his technique – and mental strength – against a far friendlier attack.

True, there is a big year to come with the summer Tests, an overseas Ashes tour and then a World Cup in the sub-continent, where Bangladesh is one of the three venues. But there will be other times to rest up, such as the Twenty20s, when Strauss does not take part.

Passing up the chance of a short-term boost to his average and confidence seems a strange bit of thinking. Then again, our selectors are pretty good at that.

Now, who’s going to fetch the tea?