West Brom's Ahmed Hegazi to play for Egypt

The 28-year-old is yet to feature for the Baggies this season after undergoing an operation to fix a long-standing ankle problem in the summer.

But the centre-back played for Albion's under-23s against Newcastle last month.

He was also set to the play for the Premier League 2 side on Monday but their clash against Villa was postponed.

Now, though, he will join up with the Egypt squad for what will be their first match under new boss Hossam EL Badry.

The Pharaohs play Botswana in a friendly on October 14 as they look to build-up for two African Cup of Nations qualifiers against Kenya and Comoros next month.

"He (Hegazi) is going away with Egypt and he is going to get a game out there which will be good for him," Bilic said.

We planned for him to play for the under-23s, the day before Leeds. But that game was postponed.

"He is training with us, he is good, he is in good shape.

"The international break helps us with our plans for Hegazi. We didn't want to rush this week knowing that we are going to gain another two weeks – which is a long time.

"He is going away to play for Egypt, they have one game. They are going to play Botswana at home.

"I think and expect that when he comes back he will be ready to play in the team."

Bilic says Hegazi has now reached a stage in his comeback where he has to start playing games.

"He has trained for the last couple of weeks," the head coach continued.

"He looks really good. Of course, he is a good player, but he is looking fit, his touch is good, even better than I expected it would be straight after surgery.

"Physically, I wasn't surprised because he has spent a lot of time building his fitness.

"Now he is only short in terms of what you get from games which is what he will get from the under-23s and from Egypt.

"He is short of match fitness, you can't get match fitness apart from playing games. He is good."

With the exception of Hegazi, Albion are at full strength for the visit of Cardiff tomorrow with Chris Brunt and Kieran Gibbs back in training.

Gibbs missed the trip to Leeds with a virus while Brunt has not been included in the last two match day squads after picking up a minor knock.

"Kieran is available – he’s trained the last couple of days," Bilic added.

"He didn’t travel to Leeds because of that virus he had. Now he’s trained Wednesday and Thursday. He will train today and then after training I’m going to name the squad, we’ll see.

"Chris Brunt trained also yesterday, so we have the majority ready."