Raza gets in the swing of things

Long after Pakistan had made Australia look like a side from Popatwadi — to borrow Sunny Gavaskar’s pet phrase to describe a fumbling amateurish unit — by dismissing them for 129 and winning the quarter-final by 6 wickets, Raza deconstructs his big in-swinger. He shows his grip, and that’s when one gets a closer look at the hands of the boy from Gujranwala, who, after his spell of 8-1-26-3 has 11 wickets from 4 games.

And that’s when one spots the distinct deformity of his ring finger.

All in the finger

When Raza was four, his right hand got jammed in a door and the shape of the finger makes it clear that it wasn’t a minor accident. From the tip to the first joint, the finger is almost horizontally twisted towards the thumb. As for the rest of the finger, it has a prominent slant towards the little finger.

How do you grip the ball? It’s a question that instinctively pops out. Raza smiles. “Actually, it helps to get a perfect grip of the ball,” he says, as he explains how the curve of his deformed finger compliments the roundness of the ball.

At the time of the accident, no one in the Raza household imagined that the lone son in the family would one day turn his deformity into an advantage. And it was almost a decade before Raza got a cricket ball in his hands. He was 14. “I never used to play cricket, since the circumstances at home didn’t allow me to indulge in it,” he says. His father worked at a gas cylinder factory, and being the only son, there was the family pressure of doing well in life the conventional way. Ironically, Raza is employed by the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL).

His 18 wickets in four games helped his team win the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, and because of the cricket-provided cushion in life, he can talk about the tough days of the past in a lighter vein.

Raza started as a batsman, but wasn’t good at that. “No one was ready to pick me for any side. As a kid it is quite traumatic to be the last one to be picked for street games. And to add to that, my family was dead against me playing cricket,” he says.

From bat to ball

But life-changing advice came from a senior cricketer, who asked him to take up bowling. Soon he had a reputation, and offers for tape-ball cricket tournaments started to pour in. Yet, that didn’t quite change opinions at home. “The tape ball tournaments are at night. At times I have tip-toed out the door of my house to play cricket,” he says.

Things changed once Raza got spotted at an open under-19 trial. Pakistan coach Mansoor Rana recalls that congress of promising pacers from Pakistan’s remote areas. “Raza was the fastest among the bowlers there. He had not played for any regional side, but he looked the part and that’s why he got picked for the series against the visiting Indian team,” he says. Pakistan’s famous ‘open trials’ net had once again picked a sure shot winner.

Raza says that the three months spent at the National Cricket Academy saw him add the in-swinger to his arsenal. And when he mentions the name of Pakistan’s pace sensation Mohammad Asif and his presence at the NCA, there are no doubts over who passed the baton to Raza. “Asifbhai told me the use of the wrist in bowling the in-swinger. But it’s natural. I just had it in me to bowl an in-swinger,” he says.

Pak’s indigenous art

As one listens to the jargon that Raza uses to explain swing bowling, it is clear that swing bowling remains Pakistan’s indigenous art form that has been passed by the word of mouth for generations. Those regular coaching book terms like “right areas” and “seam pointing towards slips” are rarely used when Raza speaks.

It’s all about “batsman ko bahar khichna hai”, “ball ko bat ke moh pe dalna hai” and, of course, the final word in all in-swing talk is unmistakably “danda nikalna hai”.

Raza says that he learnt all these things from Asif, who in turn will surely say that he was merely repeating what Aaquib Javed told him. In-swing will never be out in Pakistan it seems.