Haider Ali: Pakistan’s Rohit Sharma, and brave adventure-seeker

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Growing up in Pakistan Punjab’s Attock, Haider Ali, their new T20 batting hope, dreamt of being a Nezabaz. In his neck of the woods, tent-pegging, the game that celebrates the daredevilry of males dangling dangerously on one aspect of rushing horses to scoop wood pegs planted on free soil with their lengthy glowing lances, goes by the delightfully sing-song Urdu identify – Nezabazi.
A metropolis related to historic battles, Attock is the religious house of equestrian’s adventurous off-shoot. Pakistan’s most well-known nezabaz was the native Nawab, late Malik Ata Mohammad Khan. He was the founding member of the worldwide tent-pegging federation. The area’s landlords, the Maliks – on Instagram, Haidar Ali’s identify is Malik Haidar Ali Khan and he’s seen on a horse – have stored the custom alive. At the biannual post-harvest melas, the world’s elite deliver out their fluttering white turbans, distinction their bright-coloured waistcoats over off-white pathani fits, wax their moustaches and get on their decked-up horses.
YouTube takes one to Pakistan’s countryside the place tent-pegging occasions have a dangal-like frenzy. Poets moonlight as announcers, sitting below shamiyanas. They sing paeans of the various nezabaz trotting round regally. A roar erupts when the rider raises the spear to point out the peg. The man on the microphone speaks about jazbaa (ardour) and dileri (braveness). Eager peasants standing on parked vans and tractors applaud. The younger and impressionable among the many crowd, hypnotised by the valour of the horsemen, surprise what it’s to be on the sting and really feel the push.
Cricket within the sub-continent offers a safer substitute for such thrill-seekers. T20 leagues are the brand new age melas, however only some like Haider get an opportunity to point out their jazbaa and dileri with out hanging precariously on horsebacks.
Attock’s one-time dreamy nezabaz, Haider, is now Pakistan’s designated top-order run-plunderer for this T20 World Cup. An aggressive top-order batsman, who isn’t all about derring-do, is a die-hard fan of a batsman from throughout the border. During on-line interviews which have fan reactions streaming reside, when Haider will get known as ‘Pakistan ka Rohit Sharma’, he blushes. He can’t imagine he has reached this far. He’s requested about his favorite movie or drama, Haider says he solely watches cricket movies, largely it’s Rohit’s on loop.
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Cut to this 12 months’s Pakistan Super League (PSL). Haider is on strike. It is that tense interval of play in a chase when followers cross their fingers. Haider, just like the nezabaz he admires, wants to assemble pace and swoop onto the goal. He’s contemporary from the u-19 World Cup, the place he had a 50-plus rating towards India. Those within the stands know him. A half-century towards the neighbours in an ICC occasion, even at a junior match, ensures head-turning recognition within the sub-continent.
But it’s not straightforward. Young Pakistan batsmen have traditionally confronted a torrid spell of their early years. There’s all the time some fast, armed with a 145-plus kph ball, to bully a rookie batter. In this sport, that pacer is Harris Rauf, like Haider a T20 World Cup squad member. He too has a narrative, one which will get periodically repeated on a number of Punjabi YouTube channels. A short synopsis will assist to know the match-up, and even Haider, higher.
Rauf, a boy from Rawalpindi, barely an hour’s drive from Attock, is an erstwhile native tape-ball legend. Even again then, he had an agent and a sponsor. Once on a lark, he took a four-hour drive to Gujranwala for trials for PSL aspect Lahore Qalandars. Pakistan’s sharpest expertise scout, Aaqib Javed, picked him from a 20,000-strong crowd of speed-seekers. Rauf, the boy with drive, starvation and a 150-kph ball, would quickly develop into probably the most sought-after T20 bowler. The Big Bash League too would come calling.
Clash to recollect
Living lower than 100 kms aside, Rauf and Haider had confronted off in lots of Ramzan-time tape-ball video games. The PSL is Level 2, the ball’s onerous and the competition tougher. Rauf squares up Haider first and follows up with a ball on the fourth stump which the batter leaves. Haider has one other Malik for firm, senior professional Shoaib.
Haider, in a tv interview, spoke about what has been hyped as this PSL’s viral second. “When I was beaten by his ball, woh chadhne laga, ankhe dikhane laga (he started intimidating me),” he says. “When I left the next ball, he again came to me and asked me to use the bat. Mujhe taap chad gayi (I lost my cool). Shoaib bhai also told me ‘maar isko ab (hit him now).’”
It’s a make-or-break second, purple mist has descended on the 2 boys from Punjab. It’s straightforward to guess the following ball. Rauf bends his again, it’s an evil brief ball climbing in the direction of Haider’s eyes. The teenager doesn’t flinch and pulls it into the stands. The subsequent ball, he takes a single to develop into PSL’s youngest half-centurion. He factors his bat to the sky, like a nezbaz would increase his spear to point out the peg he had uprooted.
The commentator tries his greatest to seize the joy within the stands. “This is sensational. If you are in Pakistan, you should get excited by this, he is just 19 and he is turning up in the first season of PSL,” he says.
It’s been months, the world has moved on from leagues to the T20 World Cup, however Pakistan remains to be excited in regards to the stare that Haider gave to the pace demon, the six he hit and the way he requested Rauf to “go fetch the ball from the stands”. Not many batsmen confront pacers who bowl 150 kph, absolutely not in Pakistan.
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Mohammad Ijaz Khan, 30, runs a pc store in Attock and in addition the Facebook web page of Haider Ali’s membership AlFaisal. He is the captain of the membership’s second crew AlFaisal Plus. He has identified Haider from the time he was 15 and had accompanied his father, an area landlord, to the membership. Malik Senior knew the membership proprietor and captain Malik Farooq, a benefactor for a lot of native cricketers. “Haider comes from the Malik family. Unke vaalid ki Farooq bhai se gupshup thi (His father was friends with Farooq bhai), so he asked him to take his son under his wings,” he mentioned.
Haider, in his interviews, by no means forgets to say the position performed by Farooq throughout these early days. “He is always there to support players. Generally, young cricketers don’t get too many games but after seeing Haider’s talent, Farooq bhai would play him in games that would feature players much older than him. He has been a cricketer from the region for a long time, he spends money from his pocket to support them,” says Ijaz. AlFaisal’s Facebook web page has Farooq receiving trophies or rewarding the day’s performers with foreign money notes.
Without a nudge or a cue, Ijaz, inside minutes of the dialog, is speaking in regards to the Harris-Haider PSL episode and inevitably Pakistan’s most-used cricketing jargon, made well-liked by Shoaib Akhtar, too will get dropped. “After Harris, Haider did the same with Mohammad Irfan in the National T20 Cup. Usko bhi phenti lagai,” he says. The Urdu-to-English translation says phenti means skein, a size of thread or yarn, loosely coiled and knotted. On cricket grounds throughout Pakistan, it’s used to explain the sound thrashing of bowlers.
While India was busy with the IPL, Pakistan was conducting the National T20 Cup with a watch on the T20 World Cup. Haider’s three fifties noticed him make the squad. It was a match, the place Hasan Ali and Wahab Riaz too acquired phentis.
Ask Ijaz if it’s the jazbaa and dileri that make Haider stand out. “Bahut good baat boli (well said), that’s exactly the reason,” says Ijaz.
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A extra well-known Ijaz, too, noticed the potential in Haider very early. Former Test star Ijaz Ahmed, now Pakistan’s head coach of all age-group groups, had caught his neck out and vouched for Haider’s expertise. Once when the Emerging Players Team was picked, Haider’s identify was lacking. On Ijaz’s insistence, he was included. The teen justified the religion in him and scored a powerful century.
“First, I see if a player has potential, temperament and technique. Only if he has the three, he can be groomed. Haider had those things so I fast-tracked him from under-19 level,” says the previous middle-order batsman who performed below Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan within the Nineteen Eighties and early 90s.
Ijaz is old-school, he doesn’t charge T20 cricket too extremely. He doesn’t come throughout as a coach who would need to reward his ward to the skies and even harp about his personal position in his success. The 53-year-old says Haider is excessive on confidence and may do nicely, however he isn’t too happy by the timing of his inclusion within the T20 World Cup squad.
“They should have played him in 50 overs and the longer version. If you put kids in T20 cricket at this age, kharabi paida hoti hai (things can go wrong). T20 doesn’t make a player,” he says. Ijaz’s tone has the ache of a craftsman who’s anxious about his high quality clay getting spoiled.
“Hum log bacche ki basics pe kaam karte hain (we work on a kid’s basics), T20 totally destroys it. Bowlers can be drafted young, woh toh aggression mein khel jaate hain (they play on aggression). See (Wasim) Akram, Aaquib Javed, Waqar (Younis). There are bowlers who have played international cricket without any first-class experience. But you can’t do that with batsmen.”
It’s not that he’s writing off Haider. “The T20 World Cup is in sub-continent (conditions), he is confident after PSL and National T20 Cup success. He has the temperament but he needs to look at his shot selection.”
That’s a criticism the younger Pakistan batsman shares together with his Indian idol. Haider’s irritating dismissals and too many half-centuries are a throwback to Rohit Sharma of the previous. But his unflinching form on the crease, his compact defensive play, the trendy off-side strokes and that help-along pull have shades of the present-day Rohit Sharma. As Ijaz says, there isn’t a doubt about Haider’s expertise however will he make it large?
The reply lies with these poetic announcers at nezabazi melas, who hold extolling the group to understand the pace of the rider and the grace of the gallop. One such plea ends with a profound couplet: “Savaar ke daudne pe koi shaq nahi hai, pur kille toh muqadar se his lagte hain. (There is never any doubt about the speed of the rider; but it is fate that decides if the peg gets pierced.)”