Contact Admin. It may be time for a reinvigorated Adil Rashid to shuffle onto centre stage once and for all. In due course, Abdul himself would follow Rashid Snr into the business. But when the time came to consider options for his own sons, Abdul had bigger plans.
A keen club player, Abdul pushed them towards cricket. Still, it would have to do. Living in this cricket factory, all his boys would show promise. Spying a good story, Bradford Council duly flew the legendary Pakistani leggie Abdul Qadir over from Lahore to conduct a few one-to-one coaching sessions.
A kind of local celebrity befell the boy. Five years later, Adil Rashid would become just the third Yorkshire-born Asian cricketer to play for the county. He was 18; when he took six wickets in the second innings to win the game, the English game went a little berserk. He was 21 and still developing emotionally as much as technically when England summoned him for his ODI debut in He played five ODIs that autumn, took three wickets, and was discarded for the next six years.
The isolation years were hardly unfruitful, as Rashid set about building the numbers β first-class figures that now read wickets, not to mention 10 centuries β to make the case. In he was brought back in to an ODI side in dire need of something different.
A spinner, a leg -spinner, who marries control with threat, adding bite in those middle overs where his team traditionally goes limp. In his longest single run of seven Tests across the winter β two against Bangladesh and five against India β he took 30 wickets. In the India series itself, he took 23; the next best English bowler was Moeen, with You should be encouraged to spin the ball and not be scared to be hit for runs.
