Ihsanullah: The boy from Swat in Pakistan who’s hit stardom at the speed of 152.65 kph
Like many Pakistan cricket fairytales, this one too starts with a broken stump. About four years back, it was in the hilly terrain of village Matta in the Swat Valley that an indulgent Mamu was invited to watch his nephew bowl on a well-rolled pitch that had come up on the rocky bank of a cackling river for a tape-ball cricket game. That day, the speed-obsessed nephew ran in like the wind, splintering the wood behind the batsman. It was the moment the family was convinced that their boy was special and needed to be groomed by specialists.
The Mamu would convince his father who would decide to take the teenager to Pakistan Cricket Board’s Remote Area talent hunt trial in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mardan city. The journey didn’t go as planned. The two-hour trek between mountains delayed their ...