'Can get bigger crowds back home'
Playing cricket in your room with a chair as the wicket and the walls as the boundary is a memory that almost anyone remotely associated with the game must have experienced.
Afghanistan's 18-year-old leg-spinner, Rashid Khan, is no different. From trying to beat his four brothers within the four walls of their room to gradually becoming the mainstay of his national side, Rashid has traversed quite a distance in a short period.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Rashid realised quite early that bowling mere straight deliveries would not help him come out on top of his older brothers and so he started turning them. He sometimes released the ball from the back of his hand and on other occasions he would just bowl the traditional leg-break.
"It helped me confuse my brothers a lot," he recalled with a smile while speaking to The Daily Star yesterday. "So you can say that my googly is a natural. I learnt it when I was really young. Nobody taught me," he adds.
That was Rashid's first tryst with leg-break bowling. And from there on, based on an advice from Rashid's brother's friend, he started doing the same on the streets, where he and his brothers played with tennis balls.
"It started at home and then it went to the streets and then one fine day I started playing with the hard ball. After seeing the way I turned the ball, my brothers told me to try cricket professionally," says Rashid, adding that he follows Pakistan's Shahid Afridi.
He is one of those Afghani cricketers who has been fast-tracked into the national team from the age-group levels. He was in fact a member of the Afghanistan under-19 team that won the Plate Cup in Bangladesh this year. And that experience is something he claims helped him do well against Bangladesh in the first ODI, where his leg-breaks and the wrong ones seriously troubled the hosts.
"I enjoyed playing the under-19 World Cup. The wickets here really help spinners," he says.
He then animatedly describes how one of his turners, a googly, got the better of Bangladesh's Mushfiqur Rahim in the first ODI.
"Mushfiqur Rahim plays slog sweeps very well and the captain told me that if I bowled him a googly, it would turn a lot and he would find it hard to hit it… so that's what I did," he says.
His accuracy and his numbers go on to justify his early promotion to the national side. He has been Afghanistan's second-highest wicket-taker in both T20Is and ODIs this year. He took 17 wickets in 12 T20Is, one less than Mohammad Nabi. He has taken 17 scalps in ODIs as well this year and boasts the best bowling average, 20.88, in his team.
So impressive have his performances been that Big Bash League franchisee Adelaide Strikers showed keen interest in him earlier this year.
An exciting character, whose youthful exuberance gushes out with every statement he makes, the youngster is aware of the difficult times that Afghanistan cricket has faced and at the same time is also optimistic of the days ahead.
"When I started playing cricket there were barely any facilities. It was difficult to get enough bats and there were not many grounds either. Today there are lots of academies and everything is fine," he says.
"People really love cricket back home. If an international team comes to Afghanistan today, you will see more crowds than this," he cheekily adds, while referring to the nearly-packed Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium during the first ODI.
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