Growing up in the late 1990s, I insisted my younger nephews and nieces call me Imran Khan instead of my real name \u2013 our own playful twist on traditional respect rituals. A few years later, I upgraded to Wasim Akram (naturally) and they obligingly followed. They\u2019re all grown now, but they still call me \u201cMama Khan\u201d or \u201cWasin Akral\u201d- the clumsy childhood pronunciations that stuck to me the way cricket has.<\/p>\n
Last week, witnessing the magnificent Mitchell Starc<\/a> overtake Akram as the leading left arm wicket-taker, made me pause \u2013 isn\u2019t it about time for another upgrade?<\/p>\n On the opening day of the second Test at the Gabba, Starc claimed his 415th Test wicket, surpassing Akram\u2019s longstanding record of 414.<\/p>\n What gives that milestone extra weight is the era in which he\u2019s doing it \u2013 a period when cricket has tilted heavily in favour of batters. Boundaries are shorter, rules gentler, bouncers restricted and scoring easier than ever. Yet Starc \u2013 with 102 Tests to his name, a bowling average hovering around 26.5, and already 17 five-wicket hauls \u2013 refuses to bow down. So yes \u2013 in a world where wickets are harder to come by and batting dominates, Starcy\u2019s resurgence doesn\u2019t just feel like a comeback. It feels like a statement.<\/p>\n Fast bowlers of my childhood in the 1990s were the giants who always lived in my imagination. Their wrists, their long run-ups, their reverse-swinging thunderbolts that detonated stumps \u2026 for kids of my generation, they weren\u2019t just athletes; they were mythological characters staging battles. Ironically, I never fancied bowling myself. I was more of a Jacques Kallis type: laid-back, calm, the easy hitter of towering sixes on crowded Karachi grounds where fielders hunted for lost balls like golfers searching for rogue shots, and batsmen casually ran singles across overlapping pitches where three other games were happening at once.<\/p>\n Decades later, I still find myself unwinding at night by closing my eyes and replaying Mitchell Starc\u2019s bullet-paced, in-swinging yorkers until sleep gently claims me. Cricket<\/a> has always been my lullaby, my compass, my shorthand for belonging. And in Starcy, I have another cricketing legend to admire.<\/p>\n The love affair began on the hot, cracked streets of Pakistan\u2019s sprawling metropolis, where a taped tennis ball and a battered wooden bat could instantly transform any alleyway into the MCG, Eden Gardens, or Lord\u2019s \u2013 depending entirely on the commentary we shouted as we played. We didn\u2019t have helmets, coaching sessions, or any concept of \u201ctechnique\u201d. We had only the fierce urgency of a six-over match and the knowledge that only two things could stop play: a parent arriving to drag someone home, or the ball flying into a neighbour\u2019s locked courtyard (often followed by the neighbour\u2019s wrath).<\/p>\n In those days, I didn\u2019t just watch the legends of the \u201990s \u2013 I mimicked them with wild arms, full-throated celebrations and ecstatic leaps. Cricket wasn\u2019t a sport; it was the first language I learned fluently.<\/p>\n Years later, when I moved to Afghanistan, I assumed I had left that world behind. I imagined a country too burdened by conflict to make space for games. I couldn\u2019t have been more wrong.<\/p>\n In Kabul and across the rugged mountains, I watched cricket surge like something inevitable. Young boys bowled with astonishing pace on gravel pitches. Teenagers practised Shahid Afridi\u2019s swagger long before Rashid Khan became Rashid Khan. I saw cricket become a soft rebellion \u2013 a quiet insistence on joy \u2013 in a place where daily life was overshadowed by the Taliban\u2019s insurgency against US and Nato forces. Amid loss and uncertainty, cricket was a small but powerful act of defiance.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n My relationship with the game hasn\u2019t always been glorious. In Bonn, while working as a journalist with Deutsche Welle, I attempted one of the boldest projects of my life: teaching Germans how to play cricket. Let me say this gently \u2013 they excel at precision, engineering and punctuality. What they did not understand, and perhaps never learned to appreciate, is why a match can last a whole day or five and still end in a draw. I explained swing, field placements, the lbw rule. I tried comparing cricket to sports they knew. Each week, their polite nods grew more strained. Our summer sessions eventually turned into multicultural food festivals featuring Sri Lankan, Indian and Pakistani dishes \u2013 peppered with tiny, almost accidental bits of batting, bowling and fielding.<\/p>\n Then came Australia. Stepping onto my first Australian oval felt like finally arriving at the mothership. During my very first week here, I spotted Tom, the hotel receptionist, watching day one of the 2021 Ashes. That was, even for me, the moment I properly fell in love with Test cricket. We chatted briefly; that same afternoon he took me to a practice session, and by the weekend, I was playing my first club game.<\/p>\n The pitches here are impeccable. The banter is effortless, warm and oddly poetic. My old obsession returned \u2013 pure, uncomplicated and joyful. In many ways, cricket shapes how I understand resilience, timing, luck and patience. I still chase the thrill of a perfect yorker on a sunlit afternoon. And at night, I still drift off with the red Kookaburra in my mind, swinging late, fast and true, uprooting the stumps.<\/p>\n Shadi Khan Saif is an editor, producer and journalist who has worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany and Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in the late 1990s, I insisted my younger nephews and nieces call me Imran Khan instead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-337654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}