Dubai: Parvez Rasool’s international career may just be a One Day International old, but he’s not exactly just another fringe cricketer trying to cement a place in the Indian team.
He is already a talismanic figure in his state of Kashmir — being the first-ever Kashmiri Muslim to don India colours — and an unlikely star who still loves his quota of mohalla (neighbourhood) cricket with the local boys when he is home.
The ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), with it’s brand of high-octane action and social life, may seem an unlikely environment for him — but the all-rounder is no stranger to it.
This is the second season that the captain of Kashmir team is turning out for Sunrisers Hyderabad. Before that, he was on the rolls of the now-defunct Pune Warriors before that.
“Yes, I don’t attend the parties. My focus is to try and improve my game,” Rasool says.
Speaking to Gulf News by phone from India, Rasool said that as someone who has to rely on the short domestic season for match practice, the opportunity to spend some quality time with some of the best professionals in the world during the IPL is a major plus.
“I am trying to make the most of my association with [Muttiah] Muralitharan, our bowling coach, at the nets,” Rasool said. “He has taken a look at my bowling videos and suggested ways of improving my craft.”
Big plus
For someone who is a specialist off-spinner (apart from being an useful lower order batsman), picking the brains of Muralitharan is a big plus —though he feels there’s a lot to learn from sharing the dressing room with the likes of David Warner, Dale Steyn, Trent Boult and regular Indian players like Shikhar Dhawan.
A recipient of the Lala Amarnath award from Indian cricket board for being the best all-rounder in 2013-14 season, Rasool was also named among the 30 probables for the last World Cup only to be pruned later.
However, there have often been hushed murmurs of criticism that Rasool’s elevation to the big league is often driven by the desire of ‘political mileage’ rather than cricketing reasons.
Rasool, who has braved many odds to come this far from the outback of the sleepy Bijbehara town in Anantnag district of Kashmir, knows he will have to walk that extra mile.
“Regardless of what some people may say, I have been taken seriously as a cricketer over the last couple of seasons on the basis of my performance at the domestic level,” he said.
“I had scored 663 runs and taken 27 wickets last year for which the BCCI awarded me while the previous year, I had scored nearly 600 runs and took 33 wickets for my state.”
It was in early 2013 when Rasool, then still short of his 24th birthday, grabbed the headlines after finishing with a haul of seven wickets for 45 for Board President’s XI against Michael Clarke’s visiting Australians in a tour game. This opened up berths for a number of India ‘A’ caps, while he was also on the flight to Zimbabwe with the senior team under the leadership of Virat Kohli.
India predictably won the series 5-0, though Rasool failed to earn his cap there.
Finally, he got a look-in for the senior team in June last year in a ODI against Bangladesh under Suresh Raina’s captaincy, where he scalped two top-order batsmen.
Classic underdog story
The heart-warming story of his Kashmir team followed — it was a classic case of the underdogs braving all odds to pull off a tense win over the big boys of Mumbai as they went on to make the quarter-finals.
“The win underlined the fact that we also have enough natural talent in the team,” Rasool recalled with a sense of pride.
“The devastating floods cost us valuable preparation time and we were literally like refugees — playing straight after managing a two-week camp in Delhi. I told the guys that if you could take so much hardship in life, facing a tough opponent is a cricket match should be no big deal for you,” he said.
The Kashmir team now has the former Indian player Sunil Joshi as coach, though Rasool considers Indian spinning legend Bishan Singh Bedi as his guru. “When Bishan sir came as the coach of Kashmir, I was more of a batsman who could also bowl. However, he saw me bowl at the nets and advised me to take up off-spin bowling seriously. I would certainly not be here today but for his contribution,” he recalled.
While his heart bleeds for Kashmir cricket, Rasool admits that he is in a dilemma as to how long he can carry on sacrificing his personal ambitions though.
“I have never thought about leaving the state before, but I am in two minds now,” he said.
“There is hardly any infrastructure in my state, and just playing a maximum of eight Ranji matches and the five zonal ODIs are not enough for my growth as a cricketer. Let’s see how it goes…”