Nottingham: Uncapped Lancashire teenager Haseeb Hameed has “run-scoring in his DNA”, England national selector James Whitaker said yesterday, after confirming his place in the Test squad for the tour of Bangladesh.
The 19-year-old Hameed is set to compete with Ben Duckett, another uncapped batsman, for the opening berth alongside captain Alastair Cook after it was left vacant by Alex Hales’s decision not to tour on security grounds.
If Hameed plays in the first Test at Chittagong next month he will become just the sixth teenager selected by England in 139 years of Test cricket and the first since the late Ben Hollioake in 1997.
But there is no denying his talent, with Hameed averaging over 50 in his 19-match first-class career.
This season he has scored four first-class hundreds, including two in the one match against Yorkshire that saw him become the first Lancashire batsman to score two centuries in a Roses fixture.
For a cricketer who has come of age in the Twenty20 era, Hameed is something of an old-fashioned opener.
“A lot of people recently have said I’m not your typical modern-day player,” Hameed, the son of an India-born cricket-loving father, told the England and Wales Cricket Board’s website yesterday. “If you look at the size of me I’m not a basher of the ball. I concentrate more on timing, patience, spending time at the crease.”
‘Quick learner’
An impressed Whitaker told Sky Sports: “Hameed is a real quick learner. He’s played against some quality county attacks and we’ve seen progress in every innings.
“We think he’s got loads of technical qualities — really good, solid technique and a great temperament. Above all else, he’s got run-scoring in his DNA.
— AFP
