New Delhi: Rashid Khan According to the latest ICC rankings, today there are number one bowlers in the world in both T20 and ODIs. But according to a new biography, the spin wizard from Afghanistan – a crowd-pulling megastar in the cricketing world – was rejected at the Under-19 national selection trial. It was the summer of 2016, and despite the punishing sun, the young man lined up with thousands of hopefuls from across the country at the Ghazi Amanullah Khan Stadium, about 15 kilometers from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.Daulat Ahmadzai and Abdul Wali Amin, two prominent former cricketers who were coaches of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, were tasked with talent spotting, says Jafar Hand’s farm-fresh book Rashid Khan: From Streets to Stardom.
Go beyond limits with our YouTube channel. Subscribe now!The wait was long and Rashid, a witness in an open trial for the first time, was eager to show off his wares. The book clearly describes exactly what happened.A coach asked him if he was a batsman or a bowler. Rashid replied that he is an all-rounder. But the youngster was told he could only choose one of two slots: bowler or batsman.Forced to make a choice, Rashid turned to consult the friends who had accompanied him. “I talked to my friends and chose batting as the preferred option out of the two roles. They agreed it was the right choice. I faced three or four balls, hit two, and missed the rest. The coach said, ‘That’s it. Thanks for coming,'” says the book. Rashid was dismissed.Interestingly, both of them would later become coach Rashid. And incidentally, the leg-break and googly bowler from Nangarhar province has also been named the world’s No. 7 all-rounder in ODIs and No. 14 in T20Is, according to the current update of the ICC rankings. This is because the world’s premier white-ball bowler has the rare gift of instantly hitting big and winning games for clubs both in the country (Afghanistan) and around the world. IPLSunrisers Hyderabad and Gujarat Titans.IPL addicts will remember how Rashid’s sixes, coupled with David Millerscored a sensational heist against CSK in April 2022. The cricketer recalled the excitement when he got a message from coach Ashish Nehra to replace the injured Hardik Pandya as GT’s stand-in captain.“Khan sir, get ready, you will captain the team tomorrow. Pandya can’t play,” the message said. “That night, I couldn’t sleep,” Rashid recalls. “Not because I was scared of the captain, but because I didn’t believe it was happening. An Afghan player would go for a toss against Chennai in the IPL! I kept thinking: people will remember Afghanistan in a different way,” he says in the book, originally published in Pashto as ‘Khan of Cricket’.On that day, Rashid made history as the first Afghan to captain and win a match in the IPL. “Millions of viewers in India and beyond saw an exciting match and a new image of Afghanistan, led by Rashid’s calm, shrewd leadership. It became a moment of national pride for Afghans everywhere,” writes Hand.
