England cricketer Shoaib Bashir finally received his visa to travel to India on Wednesday, January 24. The youngster will arrive in India this weekend but will not be part of the opening match starting on Thursday at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
"Shoaib Bashir has now received his visa, and is due to travel to join up with the team in India this weekend," an ECB spokesman said. "We're glad the situation has now been resolved."
The 20-year-old Surrey-born cricketer's parents are of Pakistani heritage. The player was born and brought up in England but was in UAE for the team's pre-tour training camp when the India High Commission was issuing the visa for the rest of his teammates for the India tour. Bashir travelled back to London on Wednesday to get his visa issue cleared and will travel to India on Saturday.
Earlier on Wednesday, England captain Ben Stokes revealed his disappointment to travel to India without Bashir. He said that the management even considered delaying their tour until Bashir got his visa.
"When I first found the news out in Abu Dhabi, I did say we shouldn't fly until Bash gets his visa," Stokes said. "But that was a little bit tongue in cheek. I know it's a way bigger thing than doing that. That was probably just emotions around the whole thing. I'm pretty devastated that Bash has had to go through this.
"As a leader, as a captain, when one of your team-mates is affected by something like that, you get a bit emotional. I know he's back in London and a lot of people are jumping through hoops to try and get this through quicker.Hopefully, we're gonna see him here over the weekend. There was never a [realistic] chance that we were ever not going to travel around this but Bash knows he's had our full support."
In another similar incident recently, the veteran Australian Usman Khawaja faced the same visa issue and arrived late in India during the 2023 series. English cricketers Moeen Ali and Saqib Mahmood have also encountered delayed visa issues to travel to India due to their backgrounds.
