Zaheer switches from late starter to quick learner

Stephen Brenkley
Saturday 17 August 2002 19:00 EDT
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All the attention has been on Parthiv Patel: 17 years and five months old, making his Test debut and performing a crucial role in saving the match for India. The remarkable story was heightened because he looked about nine and had popped into Nottingham on his way to Cubs.

It also prompted some wondering about one of his team-mates and the contrasts in the Indian side which reflect those of the country. When Zaheer Khan was 17 years and five months old he was still a month away from playing his first game of organised cricket with a hard ball.

If respected judges are to be believed, he now has it in him to be among the top swing bowlers in the world, one of India's few genuine contributions to the fast-bowling art. Not quite yet, but soon.

If it was not clear to English audiences before, it emerged with force in the hazy sunshine of Lord's on the first morning of the First Test last month. Zaheer had taken three wickets in the NatWest final at the ground a fortnight earlier, but then he was helped by the batsmen missing swinging full-tosses; now he was swinging it and pitching it as well. With his fifth ball he had Michael Vaughan dead leg-before with one which straightened. Vaughan's wicket, the world now knows, is a treasured possession. India had a new leader of the attack.

When the rightly venerated Javagal Srinath retired overnight in April it left a huge gap. Zaheer demonstrated at Lord's that he might fill it. Here was a bowler who sensed when conditions were favourable and took advantage.

England were relieved to survive too much further mishap with the new ball, although Zaheer removed Graham Thorpe and had Alec Stewart bang in front with some smart inswing later. At Leeds this week, do not be surprised if his advance and his pace quicken slightly. He has heard what Headingley can offer bowlers, and that it ain't Bombay.

Zaheer has been plying this trade for only six years. The accepted modern norm is that international sportsmen have to take up their chosen game as toddlers, preferably sooner, and then enter a kind of marriage which means forsaking all others as long as ye both shall live.

The boy from the small town of Shrirampur has belied that. By the time he had reached his majority nobody had told him how to pitch the ball, swing it, or grip it. He was brought up 300 miles from Bombay, a world away from big-time cricket, and was studying to be an engineer. The cricket he played was with his schoolmates and a tennis ball.

The young Zaheer was a handful with a yellow Slazenger but it was hardly the route to Wankhede Stadium. Nor was cricket a big deal. He played these impromptu games frequently and watched the real thing less often. He was a diligent student, encouraged by his father, a photographer, and his mother, a teacher. Cricket was but part of the daily round.

"I wasn't really into it," he said. "But it was said I should try to play at a higher level so that I would come to know exactly where I'm standing. So I left my home and went to Bombay, to play real cricket for the first time. I still didn't really dream of playing Test cricket, I don't dream, but I wanted to do my best, to see how good I could be."

Months after using a regulation, red, seamed ball for the first time he was spotted by the former Test batsman Sudhir Naik, who invited the fast-bowling kid to play for his club side. All he said was: "Yes, you can take cricket seriously." It was all the encouragement Zaheer needed. Shortly after, he quit studying engineering to concentrate on cricket. He bowled in the morning and again in the afternoon. He had a decade of lost time to make up, as he put it, to learn the finer points.

Zaheer stood out as a left-handed fast bowler. Fast bowlers of any kind remain rare in India, left-handed ones are thin on the ground everywhere. (The fact that he is now sharing the new ball in the Test side with Ashish Nehra, another left-arm seamer, only means that they are like buses: India have waited 20 years since Karsan Ghavri and now two come along at once. They know what Wasim Akram did with a cricket ball.)

Once scouted, his star rose swiftly if not meteorically. "I had the raw material, that's all." Impeded by injury in 1998, he was unable to nail down a permanent place in the Bombay state side and moved to Baroda, where they told him he would play every game. He was despatched to India's MRF Pace Foundation, where Dennis Lillee's tutelage transformed him.

The young bowler had already devoured the great Australian's book on fast bowling but there but there was another vital lesson: the need for self-analysis. "You are the one who is the best coach for yourself. That is what is the key." Zaheer first entered the public consciousness in the ICC Knockout two years ago when he took 15 wickets on India's way to the final, including that of a surprised Steve Waugh. He has still to take five matches in a Test innings.

His best return was the 4 for 76 he took against Sri Lanka to take his haul to seven in the match and allow India to level the series in August last year. But then he was not the leader of the attack.

"I hoped Srinath would stay," said Zaheer. "I wanted him to stay until I took five wickets but he didn't. It would have been great if he had been around for a couple more series because he used to come up with tips."

Zaheer will have to do without those. He has demonstrated that he is in the right company and can discomfit top-order batsmen. They should be grateful he did not start when he was seven.

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