The 19-year-old in line to be England’s next opener
Lined up to be Cook’s new partner, 19-year-old Hameed is a throwback to the old days... and he has one message for the selectors: I’m ready!
HASEEB HAMEED is the teenage sensation England are poised to turn to as Alastair Cook’s new opening partner this winter.
The Lancashire batsman appears certain to feature in the Test squads to tour Bangladesh and India when they are announced a week on Tuesday, following a stunning first full season in professional cricket.
Last Thursday Andrew Strauss, the director of cricket, and James Whitaker, the national selector, witnessed his latest half-century against Somerset, an innings that took the number of balls he has faced in this summer’s County Championship to an astonishing 2,858.
To put that into perspective, at the close of play that evening Chris Nash, his nearest rival, had chalked up 2,174, which is 114 overs fewer — or more than a full day’s play. It is a statistic that highlights an extraordinary discipline to the art of runscoring, one that would make Geoffrey Boycott proud.
Now Hameed feels ready for the next step. A step he has felt destined for since his early coaching sessions with dad Ismail in the local park.
That relationship has been key to his development. Although now in the first-class ranks, his Indian-born father remains his primary coach, watching on from the stands during matches and later honing the technique instilled in him when, as an eight-year-old, he went for his first trial at Old Trafford.
‘One of the things I have had from a young age is a belief I will play international cricket for England. It has always been in the back of my mind,’ says Hameed.
‘Recently, the talk about me has been difficult to get away from, but it is something I have tried to take in my stride. I just decided that if I focus on the here and now, then hopefully the future will look after itself. But it’s my dream to play for England, not only play but to a good level, and I think I am ready. The reason I say that is because I have been able to put in performances against high-class opposition.
‘My first hundred this season came against Jeetan Patel, Rikki Clarke, Keith Barker, guys who have been around a long time. The second was against Stuart Broad and Imran Tahir, and the Yorkshire game was pretty special as well.’
Extremely special, actually. No other Lancastrian has scored two hundreds in a Roses match before the 19-year-old managed it last month. Two of Yorkshire’s premier players, Andrew Gale and Tim Bresnan, put traditional rivalry aside to hail his talent.
Hameed added: ‘Performances like that give me confidence and you can’t be a good quality sportsman until you have that belief in yourself. If I don’t believe in myself it’s not fair to ask others to
believe in me. I feel ready. But I know if I get my chance the work will get harder.
‘One of the first things I got from my dad after I got my two hundreds against Yorkshire was, “Take your game further now”. His message was, “You can’t rest on your laurels. Never be satisfied”.’
Hameed has all the shots but the wisdom to not always play them. It has been an old-fashioned approach, good for several significant records: Hameed is the first teenage opening batsman to score four Championship centuries in a season and the youngest player in first-class history to score two in a match.
‘Playing in the First Division for the first time I knew it was going to be tough, a real challenge,’ he said. ‘But I have always wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the opposition — to force them to make plans to get me out.
‘I want to put a value on my wicket. I don’t want to be someone that comes off every seven or eight innings because they play in an attacking and flashy kind of way. I want to be someone who puts in performances consistently, makes big scores and that comes from understanding your game, calibrating risk. The technique comes from my dad’s coaching. We believe it is vitally important to have strong basics to be successful. If you look at the best players in the world, guys like Joe Root, Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson, they are unbelievably strong in their basics.
‘Even AB de Villiers — who plays all these fancy shots — when you hear him talk about batting, he focuses on keeping his head in line with the ball, and his balance. To have that will help you play all three formats, whereas if you go the other way and train yourself to play in the T20 fashion, maybe it’s more difficult to convert your performances into the longer format.’
Hameed still possesses the diminutive Gray Nicolls bat he tucked under his arm when traipsing over to Rawsthorne’s concrete expanse to gatecrash the coaching sessions given to his brothers Safwaan and Nuaman — a dozen and 11 years his seniors respectively.
‘I would rock up with oversized gear and demand to play,’ he says. ‘Dad clearly saw a little bit of a spark in me.’
Others recognised it too. As an eight-year-old, he struck 19 not out on his debut for Tonge Cricket Club and followed that up with an unbeaten 22. ‘That was progress.’ A trial with Lancashire Under-11s fol- lowed. ‘You think I am skinny now, you should have seen me then. I was no bigger than the stumps,’ he grins. Too small, they said. Come back next year, they said.
As a nine-year-old, he made the cut as a leg-spinner. His batting break would come when, as a tail-ender, he hit 48 not out, including a single off the last ball, to end Warwickshire’s two-year unbeaten record. As an opener the following summer he got his first Lancashire hundred. At 11, he won the coveted Cedric Rhodes Trophy, the club’s player of the year award for Under-19 and below.
It all sounds like the smoothest of journeys to the cusp of international cricket. But Hameed, who speaks with the precision of one of his cover drives, insists two significant jolts have made him what he is today.
The first came when he was 14 and thought he knew it all. He became less receptive to his paternal advice. His results in the middle dropped dramatically. ‘I started training poorly; thought I knew best,’ Hameed said.
The second triggered this bountiful summer. Last December, England’s coach Andy Hurry informed him at the team hotel in Sri Lanka that he would not be going to the Under-19 World Cup.
‘I was heartbroken,’ he said. ‘As an age-group cricketer, the Under-19 World Cup is the highest level you can play at. The only thing I hadn’t done was play in a World Cup. Getting to the final hurdle and being left out was devastating.’
Now, though, he is looking up. ‘If I am given the opportunity to represent my country I am pretty sure I will take it,’ he said. ‘I will be more than happy to fly out there.’
He would be able, then, to put his mantra to use. ‘Forget everything that’s happened, what might happen, just try to focus on that next ball coming down because it’s the most important one.’
It’s a policy that promises to serve England well.