T20 World Cup: How Shadab transformed from a reluctant cricketer to Pakistan’s premier all-rounder

On his way to the academy, he would stop at a nearby ground where children of his age would be playing football. “I had more interest in playing football, and without any training, I was picked for the Islamabad U-16 side. But I didn’t go,” he says.

Cricket, though, was the reason his parents left behind their farms at Mianwali on the banks of the Indus for Rawalpindi. So that their cricket-crazy son could enrol at an academy. That son, though, was Mehrab, Shadab’s elder brother. “Mehrab was mad about the game, and a much better player than I am. So another brother, who was studying in the university, put the idea across to shift, so that Mehrab can be a cricketer and I could join a better school,” he says.

But destiny decided otherwise. Shadab was one day bowling in the nets — medium pace, as he practised those days — when the club’s president Sajjad Ahmed happened to notice him. He instantly told one of the coaches that this boy could bowl good wrist-spin. “I noticed he had strong wrists, but he didn’t have the build of a fast-bowler. So my initial thought when I saw him was that he would be better bowling leg-spin,” Ahmed had once told this paper.

Shadab, a diligent and obedient boy, would carry out every instruction of his coaches. He began to bowl leg-spin and was soon obsessed with it. He would spend endless hours on Youtube surfing footage of the great leg-spinners of the past, from Abdul Qadir and Anil Kumble to Shane Warne and Mushtaq Ahmed. He wanted to bowl like Warne and began to copy his action too. But deep in his heart, he thought he was not talented enough to be a Warne, or even play for Pakistan. “Playing for the country was never a dream, because I sincerely did not think I had the quality. Maximum U-19 level,” Shadab tells Zalmi Cricket.

His academy coaches though had a different view. “I thought he was one of the finest young talents we’ve had here. Apart from bowling leg-spin, he was a fearless batsman and terrific fielder. The grounds here did not have much grass, but he was not afraid to dive around. He could do everything,” Ahmed says.

Tough start

All he wanted was to turn the ball. Turn it a mile, like his idol Warne. He would spend hours on Youtube filing through the spin wizard’s collection of 708 Test wickets. His favourite was a Shivnarine Chanderpaul dismissal, one that spun not one mile, but a couple, out of the rough outside off-stump and knocked leg-stump out. Shadab tried the same, but nimble-footed boys at his club would step down and wrist him through the leg-side.

That’s when he burned his leg-spin ambition and dedicated more hours to his batting. So crazed was he about batting that he nearly forgot leg-spin, but for Ahmed’s intervention. “Shadab was so interested in batting that at one time he quit bowling, but I advised him to consider becoming an all-rounder. Then he would have a better chance to play top-level cricket, and he complied.”

By the time he was picked for the Pakistan U-19 side, he considered himself more as a batting all-rounder than a bowler who could bat. But observers had a different opinion. It finally took a net session with Dean Jones and Wasim Akram, soon after he was picked as an emerging player for Islamabad United in 2017, to convince him of his leg-spinning skills. Jones called him “pure gold”; Akram anointed him as the “spin future of Pakistan.”

Shadab had long shed the ambition to rip it like Warne. But he had added strings to his bow — apart from the leg-break, a sniper-eyed wrong’un, a slippery flipper and a slithery seam-up ball. The action too had become more pragmatic, whippier and quicker.

The wrong’un is his weapon of choice. He bowls it like most leg-spinners do, delivered out of the back of the hand, the palm looking skywards, with the wrist 180 degrees to the ground. But the arm-speed makes him difficult to read off the hand. He also coaxes subtle drift, usually into the right-handed batsmen, but sometimes away from them as well.

The flipper is used sparsely, and seam-up mostly in the Powerplay or as a change-up if he is getting hit. Unlike most post-modern white-ball leg-spinners, he is not averse to bowling the leg-break, though he does not turn it as much as Warne or Mushtaq did. But the soul of his bowling, former bowling coach Mushtaq had once told the PCB website, is his accuracy. “Ask him to bowl 100 balls in one spot, he would do that. He is very hardworking.”

Pakistan’s Shadab Khan celebrates after taking the wicket of Tom Cooper of the Netherlands during the T20 World Cup cricket match between the Netherlands and Pakistani in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Gary Day)

The trait to work hard has shone brightly, as Shadab is just a wicket away (97) from being Pakistan’s highest wicket-taker in T20Is. Ten of those have come in this World Cup, where he has been his side’s best bowler and fielder. Against South Africa, he was their best batsman, reeling out 52 off only 21 balls. So much so that he could be in contention for the Most Valuable Player award if Pakistan win the World Cup. Not something Shadab might have dreamt when he took the roundabout road to the cricket academy, for fear of getting hit by the hard ball, and to play football.

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There is nothing Shadab can’t do. He could even sing, though, according to his teammates, he is a horrible singer. Says colleague Imam-ul-Haq in an interview: “The worst singer in the team, but he considers himself the best.” There are enough reels on Youtube and Instagram where Shadab attempts covers of Atif Aslam songs, him singing (rather screaming) in the team bus. During the lockdown, he started a singing channel on TikTok, where he would upload self-composed songs.

His close friend Hassan Ali’s only request when he invited him for his wedding was not to sing. Shadab kept quiet, but then spent all the time dancing, that too in track pants. He later tells Akram in an interview: “I had forgotten my shoes. I had come in sandals. I knew everybody would make fun of me. So I tried something different and wore track pants.”

Pakistan’s Shadab Khan appeals for the wicket of Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Pakistan and Bangladesh in Adelaide, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022. (AP Photo/James Elsby)

There is an infectious energy about him that spills onto the field. Shadab is often the chattiest one on the field, always whispering something to the fast bowlers, always suggesting something to captain Babar Azam. “He has lots of ideas and is very sharp,” Jones had once said and picked him as a future captain of Pakistan. He is only 24, but is already the team’s vice-captain, apart from captaining sides in the Pakistan Super League and Caribbean Premier League. “He is a young and passionate guy and a really good communicator with everyone. That’s what you need from a captain who is willing to talk to everyone during the tough times,” Islamabad United coach Luke Ronchi had once observed.

Another teammate, Colin Munro, too would vouch “I’ve played under a lot of captains. Shadab is up there as one of the best captains. He’s a young captain, but really calm and that’s what I enjoy about him. The calm he brings to the group, when we’re out on the field. T20 is a hustle-bustle format, very in-your-face, but he keeps you calm. You can see the way he talks to the bowlers and keeps them calm.”

Many in Pakistan cricket feel that Shadab should be Babar’s successor. Some reckon he should already have been. He would make a good skipper too — he is game-aware, tactically sharp, popular, friendly and leads by example. “He would make an excellent captain,” former teammate Wahab Riaz would say. That is as long he does not fill their evenings with his songs.