Naseem Shah speaking to reporters:
“I kept showing up at the academy regularly and eventually got picked for the U-16s and U-19s before being named in the Pakistan squad for the Emerging Teams Asia Cup,” said the fast bowler. “I was also in contention for the National T20 Cup and the PSL when I experienced pain in my back while bowling in a practice match.
“We got the CT scan done after which it emerged that I had three fractures in my back and I was asked to stop playing for six months. All of a sudden it felt like my life was over. At that moment I thought: ‘This was my time to do everything that I wanted to’.”
“More injuries did come in my career but by that time I had understood that God gives challenges but He then blesses with a lot of ease too,” he observed. “I realised I was blessed to be able to learn such important lessons from life at such a young age.”
“When I go to the academy now, kids over there are in awe of the fact that I get to travel the world and have so much fun at such a young age,” he said. “But then I think these kids don’t have an idea of how blessed they are to have parents.”
“When I was young my father used to say: ‘Cricket angraizon ka khel hai (Cricket is the white man’s sport)’,” he said. “At that time, I didn’t really understand why he said that.
“In my debut match, Australia hit us 500 odd runs. Totally exhausted by the end of the day, I thought to myself, may be my father was right,” noted Naseem with a smirk on his face as the room burst into laughter.
“In the next match, my room-mate Musa Khan made his debut and the Australians hit some 650 runs. Musa came to me after the match and said: ‘Maybe your father was right’,” Naseem went on to say.
“Each wicket at the PSL will be mean valuable to me,” he said. “Over there, no one cares how good you look,” he quipped. “All that matters is bowling in the right areas.”
“We’ve talked about this with the management and we are trying to find ways of managing workload,” he said. “Personally I want to play all three formats but we can consider solutions like skipping a T20 or two to prepare for a Test series. However, how we can go about it is still being pondered on and I hope it helps us be better.
