Not many in cricket-crazy India had heard of Kamran Khan when Shane Warne tossed the ball to the 18-year-old fast bowler during the final moments of an Indian Premier League match in Cape Town last week.
The opposition needed six runs, and former India captain Saurav Ganguly was at the crease. Warne was clearly taking a huge gamble by entrusting a rookie. But in just two overs Khan, whose family is so poor that he slept on railway platforms when he traveled as he could not afford even cheap hotels, not only ensured victory for the Rajasthan Royals but also became India’s latest cricketing hero.
A dropout from a village school, the left-arm quickie barely comprehends English.
PHOTO: AFP
He admits that Warne “speaks English so fast” that he has difficulty figuring out his captain’s instructions. When Warne gave him a pep talk after handing him the ball in the match against the Knight Riders, one of the words Khan could decipher was “pressure.” Warne was telling him to relax and bowl normally.
Khan told the Indian Express later: “I have seen several major setbacks in my life. I am used to pressure.”
Khan’s father was a taxi driver in Uttar Pradesh. But a lung ailment kept him mostly at home and Khan’s mother took to rolling bidis (the poor Indian’s cigarette) to supplement the family’s meager income. His father died five years ago, followed three years later by his mother.
“We didn’t have the money for proper medical treatment for our parents,” said Khan’s older brother Shamshad Khan. “Father would get angry and beat Kamran if he skipped school to play cricket. He wanted Kamran to join the army so he could earn something.”
But Khan was so obsessed with cricket that he even chiselled his first bat himself.
“Much later, when the villagers got together and bought him a proper bat, he was very happy,” his brother said.
Khan’s first break came when a cricket coach from a neighboring village took him to Mumbai two years ago. In the big city Khan began playing with a proper cricket ball for the first time, and not with the tennis balls used in the village.
“He struggled really hard,” said the coach, Naushad Khan. “He is strong and very determined. Back home, he would play in district cricket tournaments eating just tea and biscuits, since he didn’t have money to buy food.”
But as with the hero of the film Slumdog Millionaire, there was to be a fairytale twist to Khan’s life. Rajasthan Royals’ director of coaching, Darren Berry, spotted the teenager at a tournament in Mumbai two months ago, and signed him up for £16,000 (US$24,000).
“We have one young player who’s going to be very interesting,” Warne predicted. “We’re tossing up now what his nickname is going to be, Wild Thing or Tornado — something like that.”
Khan’s rueful response was that had the money come earlier, he could have paid for the treatment his mother needed.
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