Andy Gilder wrote:
How often do England play two front-line spinners, a tactic even less likely if they persist with six specialist batsmen?
So the only way Rashid is going to get anything like a run in the side is if Swann suffers a serious injury.
Even if he was picked ahead of Swann in Bangladesh, took ten wickets and made a century he still wouldn't be in the first Test side of the summer.
We've certainly picked two spinners in a four man attack on the Subcontinent in the not too distant past. The selectors can't afford to ignore Rashid for long because he is potentially a genuine Test class all-rounder who can bat at 6 and take five wickets in an innings, and no other current English player is anywhere close to being this.
At the same time he won't get in ahead of Swann purely on the basis of matches against Bangladesh, and rightly so as Swann has been an unqualified success against far better sides so far. On their last tour of England we were winning matches against them without any of the bottom five or six batsmen having to strap their pads on in anger.