It can be difficult for young players to find their place in an England dressing room and surely the easiest way to do so with the Bazballers is to take up golf.
But not for Rehan Ahmed. “I’m not sure how anyone plays that sport. Shocking sport. I hold it (golf club) like a cricket bat. Keysie (Rob Key) told me to smack it and I missed it by that much,” he says, widening his arms.
Rehan is sat on the roof terrace of the team hotel and reflecting on playing back-to-back Tests for the first time and he cuts a confident, relaxed figure. He puts that down to his Muslim faith which will always come first and puts cricket in perspective.
But he also appears calm and carefree at the age of just 19 in Test cricket because Ben Stokes has created an environment in which a teenage British Asian and devout Muslim can be himself in the Bazball environment.
He was excused training two days before the second Test because he was fasting (he opts for voluntary fasting on Mondays and Thursdays) and was also allowed to miss nets on the pre-series training camp in Abu Dhabi to attend Friday prayers. “I messaged the team manager asking if we could miss this day because we need to pray. Stokes messaged me straight away and said come to me whenever you want about this kind of stuff, I understand it fully. And yes he’s stuck by his word. Every time I pray he is so respectful, very understanding. Everyone is on this tour.”
Rehan is a cricket obsessive but on a long tour has forced himself to leave his bat in the dressing room overnight so he does not spend his entire evening shadow batting. Instead he relaxes by watching a Turkish drama called Ertuğrul, set in the Ottoman Empire, not a normal topic of conversation with England players. “I started it in Pakistan and I still have three years left of it and by the time I finish it, I’ll have forgotten the first part, so I’ll start again.”
Rehan will be joined in Abu Dhabi by his older brother this week and while he has been told there will be no training there will be time to reflect on his series so far. He has eight wickets after two Tests and is probably going to be bowling more as the series wears on. Joe Root’s role as a spinner may fade into the background as he tries to find form with the bat. Root bowled loosely in the first innings of the second Test but it took Stokes 60 overs to toss Rehan the ball. He responded with three wickets. Along with Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir, he did not let India run away in the second innings when Root was injured and India were building a big lead.
“I don’t like bowling maidens. I think that’s just boring.” he says, speaking the kind of fearless language the Bazball management likes to hear. Mind you, bowling the odd maiden is handy for a spinner because it usually means they have cut out the bad ball, but the fact Rehan appears naturally able to shrug off a bad day or poor delivery, reassured by Stokes that it does not matter if he is going at four an over, is a good sign, given many English spinners have been less able to handle that pressure.
Stokes likes him because he constantly wants the ball and was itching to go in at no 3 on the third evening and don the nighthawk clothes as Stuart Broad’s successor in the job. He danced down the wicket in the final over of day three in Vizag and chanced has arm hitting over the top.
“It’s just the way I want to play. I just thought it was the first time India had the field up to me. I thought I would try to nick a couple of boundaries here. It made sense. I managed to do that, got a couple in the last over. Hopefully they will keep the field up a bit more.”
His favourite player growing up was Kevin Pietersen, who was in India commentating on the first two Tests and gave him some batting advice before resuming the run chase on day four. “He said right, I just want to see 6s.”
In training he says he prefers batting but in games it is different. “I like bowling, moving the field around.” And so far has been unfazed in India, despite the record of leg spinners here. “I don’t think there’s many places where you can say leg-spin does very well. I think it’s more about adapting as well as you can,” he said. “I think I bowled a bit slow in the first Test. Batsmen had a lot of time to play more. So I tried to speed up a little bit. It’s more of a thinking game than anything. Not a skill thing. I think if you just keep it very simple you’ll be all right.”
It was Adil Rashid who broke the glass ceiling for English leg spinners becoming one of the best in the world in white ball cricket but did not last long in the Test side when there was an impatience for bowling a bad ball and he soo fell out of love with the red ball game.
“In this new era with attacking positive mindsets, I fit in in a way he didn’t. It’s just two different players at two different times.”
Cricket is about timing and Rehan is in the right place, the right team, at the right time. The benefit for both, in time, will be clear to see.
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