RASHID KHAN: MASTER SPINNER
Perhaps the most memorable images from Rio de Janeiro 2016 are of the Refugee Olympic Team. They won no medals, but surely adulation from the crowds and the forcing of a conversation on refugee rights was victory enough.
The Afghanistan cricket team, of course, is not a team of refugees. But most of the men who were part of that country’s first steps in world cricket learnt the game when living
in Pakistani refugee colonies through the many years of war. It was in Pakistan that Afghan cricket was born, though cricket in Afghanistan, like in India and elsewhere in the neighbourhood, was played during the British years.
Afghanistan is still trying to rise from the rubble, and reports of terror attacks are so frequent that peace remains a distant reality. “We stay in touch every day with people back home. We can’t be away for two-three days because anything can happen,” says Rashid Khan, the best Afghan cricketer, not yet 20 and a legend in the making. Or is he a legend already?
Rashid’s achievements as a cricketer are many. Having mastered a quickish variety of leg-spin, with many dips and swerves and a heady dose of sorcery, he is the toast of the cricket world, playing a big role in Afghanistan’s recent surge to the highest stage. Every T20 league in the world wants a piece of him. He makes millions and the teams are happy to pay him—he is that good.
He has also in no small part contributed to Afghanistan’s newly acquired status as a Testplaying nation (along with Ireland). The team is readying for its first Test match—against India, in Bengaluru, starting June 14. And it’s because of Rashid’s presence in the Afghan ranks that India are not the overwhelming favourites.
What does it mean to be Rashid Khan—a big-league cricket star in a war-ravaged country and a newbie in the world of cricket?
He lives in Afghanistan, although work keeps him out much of the year. He doesn’t get mobbed by fans because “we don’t go outside”, he says with a smile. “If it’s urgent, we hide our face or something.” A restaurant, maybe? “Yeah, I can go but I have some security.”
The adulation is understandable. Afghans have had little cause for happiness since the 1970s, when it became the war zone it remains today.
“Once we were going for a match. I think we were stopped like 20 times. People were coming in front of our car and saying ‘stop, we want to take pictures’. This is how crazy they are because they haven’t seen such players. They have only seen on TV that this man is doing well,” he says.
When Rashid goes out to play, therefore, he carries the weight of the whole country’s expectations. “Even if I don’t perform in one match, they get worried. They are expecting five wickets in every match. If I don’t take it, they say, ‘What happened to you?’” he says. But the pressure doesn’t faze him. “I am just trying my best. I think the best thing is to enjoy yourself. The more you enjoy, I think, the better you perform. There is the burden on me to do well because we lose most of the matches if I don’t do well,” he says.
Sportspersons always say that it’s all about the fans. But the truism takes on a different dimension when it comes to Afghan cricketers. “We worry about the situation back home,” says Rashid. “In the past one month, we had about three-four bomb blasts in Afghanistan. That makes us very sad. We are trying to put smiles on the faces of people. We just try and put on some extra good performances so that our people can celebrate and get these negative things out of their minds.”
Rashid has been widely hailed as the best legspinner in the world—one of the great cricketers of the current era even. And you are only so great and no more unless you play Test cricket.
Still forced to play all its matches abroad, as security concerns keep other countries from touring, the country’s elevation to the highest level in the game has been hailed across the board—it’s the sort of story immortalised on celluloid in Out of the Ashes (2010) that makes everyone believe in fairy tales.
“It will be a big day for cricket in Afghanistan… can’t wait to be called a Test cricketer,” gushes Rashid. “I think there will be no one who will not be watching it on TV back home. Whatever we play, they watch it, if not on TV, they follow it online. It’s amazing.”
Afghanistan’s rise has been cricket’s most important story in recent years, and Rashid’s emergence proof that you don’t always need money and state-of-the-art means to be good. A legend can be born in the detritus of a half-century-long war, finding his calling in a refugee camp.
—Shamya Dasgupta