India’s petty muscle-flexing to block young England’s young Muslim spinner Shoaib Bashir from entering the country just makes them look SMALL… who gains from this?

In years to come, Somerset off-spinner Shoaib Bashir will be able to look back with pride on his first tour as an English cricketer. But first he will have to deal with the day his teammates flew to India without him.

One moment he was elevated to the Test squad – a call-up that brought tears of joy – and the next he was knocked down, reminded of his status in a part of the world where not everyone welcomes his kind.

A British Muslim of Pakistani descent, he waited in Abu Dhabi for his visa on Monday while the rest of Ben Stokes’ Bazballers trained in Hyderabad ahead of Thursday’s first Test. Maybe he followed their progress on social media.

It seems almost pointless to point out that people of Pakistani descent have to jump through extra hoops to get into India – if they get there at all. The mood, fueled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took an anti-Muslim turn long ago.

Another Westerner pointing this out won’t budge. But it seems an unnecessary humiliation to have Bashir, a 20-year-old with six first-class games under his belt, hanging around the Gulf for paperwork that could easily have been processed in time – he applied as soon as he was selected on December 11 – and would soon be doing so anyway should arrive.

He remained grounded in Abu Dhabi, where Brendon McCullum’s team had recently completed a ten-day training camp.

The young spinner was unable to travel due to a visa delay. A similar incident has happened before with Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja

Who benefits from this administrative muscle-work? What else does this do other than make Bashir feel small and make India – the world’s largest democracy – seem smaller?

Pakistanis routinely face these hurdles to enter a country home to some 200 million Muslims – the rough equivalent of the populations of Britain, Germany and Italy combined.

Just ask their cricket journalists, who struggled to get visas for the recent World Cup, a tournament from which Pakistani fans were almost entirely absent. Before that, Pakistan-born opening batsman Usman Khawaja of Australia was forced to arrive in India later than his teammates for a Test series. Paperwork, you see.

The ECB puts on a brave face, with head coach Brendon McCullum cheerfully suggesting: ‘Things take time, don’t they?’ And if they are less impressed in private, they know it doesn’t pay to poke the behemoth: Indian money rules world cricket, and the whole circus – administrators, coaches, players and commentators – understands which side their bread is buttered on .

News of Bashir’s criticism came on the day Modi arrived in the northern city of Ayodhya to open a Hindu temple on the site of the former Babri Masjid mosque. The infamous destruction of the mosque by Hindu nationalists in 1992 sparked communal violence not seen in India since the 1947 partition, making the site one of the country’s most contested spaces.

So it was no surprise that Modi, who hails “the coming of a new era”, chose Ayodhya as the unofficial starting point of his re-election campaign, which will take India to the polls in the spring. His pro-Hindu undertone is expected to deliver another landslide victory.

And it made the ECB’s suggestion that they would turn to the Indian government to help Bashir ironic. On one level, the suggestion made sense. The secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India is Jay Shah, whose father, Amit, is India’s Home Minister – effectively Modi’s No. 2. If anyone can get a visa with a simple phone call, it’s Shah Jnr.

But the nexus of cricket and politics in India has become so complex that every decision by the BCCI must be viewed through the prism of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived to officiate the opening of a Hindu temple

Modi was seen at the inauguration of the Ram Temple, built on the site of the former Babri Masjid mosque

The first of England’s five Test series against India will take place next Thursday

Bashir’s visa application was submitted in the second week of December, just hours after he was announced as part of the England tour group

At times, the recent World Cup felt like a vehicle for the Prime Minister’s glorification, and it almost worked: Had India not flopped in the final, he would have been given the photo call he so loved, handing the trophy to Rohit Sharma in the presence of more people. than 90,000 fans in a stadium that bears his name. Instead, he had to present it to Australian Pat Cummins, who stood – alone and bewildered – on stage long after Modi had left him to his work.

Bashir is not the first person of Pakistani descent to be harassed by the selectively turning wheels of Indian immigration, nor will he be the last. But the normalization of this process is no reason to ignore it.

Bashir must now twiddle his thumbs until he feels like he is part of a tour that should instead create lifelong memories.

As for his family, it’s unlikely they’ll make the trip even if their boy earns his first cap. It’s just not worth it.