McCullum pleads for more games for Bashir, Hartley with County Clubs

England head coach Brendon McCullum has suggested to the top administrators of English County Clubs to give opportunities to Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley after the young spinners performed admirably during the Test series in India despite their inexperienceFor England to build on a breakthrough tour of India McCullum had given opportunities to Bashir 20 and Hartley 24 despite both of them having modest records and little experienceThe duo have been Englands bright spots in a series that they have lost 13 with the fifth and final Test yet to be played Both have claimed their firstever fivewicket hauls in a Test match Bashirrsquos eight wickets for 198 in Ranchi increased his England Test wicket tally 12 in two games to surpass his firstclass wicket tally 10 in six gamesConsidering their performance so far McCullum pleaded with the administrators of County Cricket clubs to give the rookie spinners more opportunities because neither Bashir nor Hartley are firstchoice spinners for their teams Bashirs injured teammate Jack Leach who is set to undergo surgery this week to treat a knee injury is the firstchoice spinner at Somerset while Hartleys club Lancashire has recently signed Australian spinner Nathan LyonAlso ReadEnglish lsquobazrsquobowledrsquoThough McCullum said he understood why Lancashire opted for Lyon he still urged the clubs to give more opportunities to young England spinners It will be a slight frustration of ours if they werenrsquot given opportunities at county levelrdquo McCullum was quoted as saying by the English medialdquoTherersquos a very real possibility that might be the case but without wanting to dictate to counties because they have their agendas as well When you see performances like we have out of those two bowlers throughout the series I think yoursquod be slightly mad if you didnrsquot give them more opportunities in county cricketrdquo McCullum saidThe England head coach said playing more matches will help the spinners improve their skillsldquoIt would be nice to think theyrsquod get plenty of opportunities so that they can improve at a quicker rate Whether those opportunities are with counties or with England I think wersquove just got to keep trying to get cricket into them Whatever opportunity we can wersquoll try and give it to them Because there are two guys there more than good enough for international cricket Theyrsquore also tough charactersldquoWhat you canrsquot tell from the outside of a manrsquos body is the size of their heart ndash and wersquove seen both of them have big hearts and theyrsquore up for international cricket It doesnrsquot get any harder than it is right now Theyrsquove both stood up and performed so wersquove just to keep giving both of them chancesrdquo McCullum addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever