Run Immy Run

Imran Tahir and his eccentric celebrations were on display in South Africa’s quarter-final win against Sri Lanka in ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. (Source: AP)

For most, Lahore to Delhi is an eight-hour hop by bus. For DD leg-spinner Imran Tahir, it has been an elaborate but utterly thrilling roller coaster that has seen him criss-crossing three continents and 27 teams. Bharat Sundaresan retraces his steps.

The year was 2003, and it was a summer afternoon in the English countryside when Imran Tahir decided to go for a run. He had just taken a catch to win a match. Earlier that day, he had snared seven victims to set up that very win. Now, he was running like Forrest Gump. And before long, he was knocking on the doors of a faraway bank, asking for directions to find his way back. His teammates, meanwhile, had long given up the chase.

In years to come, this would become Tahir’s trademark idiosyncrasy, his calling card. That manic sprint towards the outfield, his arms held aloft and his head leaning back on the shoulders. It was also one of the highlights of the 2015 World Cup, where he was South Africa’s second best wicket-taker with 15 wickets.

But back then, a dozen years ago, he was nothing more than a nervous 23-year-old, desperately trying to live his dream. He was an outsider on the cusp of travelling the globe in order to create his identity, a cricket nomad whose dramatic journey had begun in the little village of Norton-in-Hales and would end up in Cape Town with Tahir playing international cricket for South Africa.

Along the way, everything from his accent to his hairstyle has undergone dramatic transformations. But not that unbridled passion that he has always carried with him. Not that manic sprint he launches into at the fall of a wicket.

“I don’t do it to impress people. This is me (thumping his chest). This hunger has built up for years and years. It has to come out. I might get a heart attack if I keep it all bottled up. I rather give the batsman a heart attack,” says Tahir. Then he jumps to his staple dialogue, one that he reiterates a dozen times. “Yaar mujhe is game ke saath pyaar hai.”

Loving every moment

And you can sense that he means it on each occasion. Just like he does whenever he kisses his Protea badge with pride after having completed his celebratory run. These days his teammates don’t follow him anymore. It is he who has to retrace his way back to them. But what are a few extra yards to a man who has dared to travel thousands of miles just so that he could find his true manzil.

His is a story of a rolling stone that has collected gloss along the way, but has never lost its original and eccentric glow. This week, Tahir will commence his first full season in the IPL, where he will bowl his gamut of leg-breaks and googlies for Delhi Daredevils — for whom he played six matches as a replacement player last season. It will be the 27th team he’s represented in his career, a unique feat which according to Tahir is a testament of his ability to remain loyal to his inherent self and ensuring that wherever he’s gone it’s the system that has changed for him.

“I have not been a chameleon, who changes his colours depending on where he is. Idhar gaya toh blue, udhar toh red. Delhi will get the same Imran Tahir that the previous 26 teams got,” he says.

The same can’t be said about his accent, which does show enough glimpses of the wear and tear it’s gone through over the many years spent as a stranger in strange lands for the last two decades.

He constantly oscillates between Urdu and English, from mere yaar to my man, from brother to bhai jaan. “I get confused myself about who I sound like. An Englishman? A Pakistani?”

Being a maverick has helped his cause too, believes Tahir, as it has meant clubs, counties and franchises alike have warmed to him both on and off the field. “I have always believed in having a good time. I don’t want teams thinking, ‘Oh dear, another five long months with Immy’. You give happiness and you get it back,” he says.

But like he proved during this World Cup, it’s his ability to provide breakthroughs for his team in all conditions, when it’s most needed and otherwise too, that has made the 36-year-old a hot property. Not to forget that whole-hearted drive to give his all to every dressing-room that has welcomed him into their mix

Yet, it all seemed a pipe-dream when he spent his days packing bags at Lahore’s Pace Mall back in the mid-90s. An early fling with cricket hadn’t gone down too well, and Tahir had resigned to the fate that his future was in answering customers’ queries at the shop. Then came a serendipitous U-19 selection trial, which he was coaxed to attend by a friend. Selector Shahid Butt took all of two balls to see the talent that Tahir possessed, and soon after, the leggie was making waves in the junior circuit.

Terrific start

“I took 11 wickets in my first match, and 54 in six matches. I wonder if only I had not listened to that friend, I would still be working in that mall. But I never look down upon my work there. It taught me how hard life is. And what I was moving on from,” says Tahir.

He had just started making headlines for being the latest leg-spinning sensation to emerge from Pakistan when England’s U-19 team landed in his den. Wickets and another spate of plaudits followed in unison. So did a chance meeting with his future wife on a tour to what would eventually become his adopted home. But like with most things to do with Pakistan cricket, there was an unexpected twist around the corner, and Tahir was dismissed as a one-dimensional googly bowler. Plus, he was competing with the likes of Mushtaq Ahmed, Danish Kaneria and Shahid Afridi. Not for the first time, Tahir’s dreams, at least at home, had been dashed.

“I had to move on. County cricket was my main motive but I started with club cricket. I got a couple of matches with Middlesex but failed to get a second wicket after getting one with my third ball,” he recalls. In many ways, this constant struggle has been a theme of his life. But like he says, “Whatever challenges I had, I challenged them back.”

The Imran Tahir story has a strong Bollywood feel to it. Everything from him shifting base for the love of his life to his visa being fast-tracked just so that he could qualify for South Africa. But that would mean ignoring the incessant work put in by the enigmatic leggie.

“I used to go bowl alone. Bowl from one end, the ball goes to the boundary on the opposite side. Run, get the ball, and bowl from the opposite end. For hours,” says Tahir.

After eight years of running through opposition line-ups in club cricket, county cricket came calling in the form of a one-year stint with Warwickshire. With 56 wickets at 24.57, he had won over coach Ashley Giles.

“He took me to his office, and said I will have a contract ready for you. Whenever you want to come back, just give me a call,” he recalls.

But it was at Hampshire that Tahir’s career-graph really took off, more so because he had stepped into the shoes of that overlord of his ilk, Shane Warne. By now, Tahir was married, and living in a tiny flat, with a rookie contract with Titans and barely able to afford even milk and bread. It was his wife, Sumayya Dildar, Tahir’s second love after cricket in his own opinion, who motivated him to take a chance with Hampshire.

“I used to bowl 30-35 overs a day for Hampshire. And once on my wife’s birthday I had promised to take her out. I reached home, asked for something to eat and collapsed on the sofa. I woke up only the next morning but she was very understanding,” he says, while describing how he prefers singing lori for his kid over going out these days.

By the time Tahir made England his base, he had already appeared for six separate first-class teams in Pakistan. While as a county cricketer he was driving in fancy cars, he didn’t even own a bike back home. And he still hitch-hiked in crowded vans to get his kit to the ground when in Pakistan.

“Money was tight. The hardest part of my life was playing in Pakistan. County cricket is a luxury. Once you’ve played in Pakistan, you can adjust to any other challenge,” he says.

Speaking of cultures, Tahir has soaked in plenty of them in his time as a nomadic freelancer over the years. He still is, in fact, in the Protea camp. By the time the noughties came to an end, Tahir had captivated the South African selectors enough — 45 wickets in a season for Dolphins — to get him into their mix. But adjusting to the harder wickets in the southern hemisphere was just one of the many new challenges for him.

“English cricketers are soft in a way, they are very good people. They are a lot more polite. They greet you every day. In South Africa, we play much harder cricket. Even if you know the guy otherwise, on the ground, he will abuse you if he wants to win the match for his team,” Tahir reveals though his reverence for county cricket is very apparent.

By 2011, he had held his arm across his chest as ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ rung out during the World Cup, a moment for which he has no words to describe, except when it comes to how his mother passed away just months before seeing her son play international cricket.

Long way back home

Though Tahir is now a well-entrenched South African, he still does make visits back home, though mainly incognito to escape much attention.

“Last time I went, I grew a long beard so that I won’t be recognised. I don’t believe in being a star. I like to meet my people who were there with me when I was a nobody,” he says.

But there’s one person he never fails to meet, his idol and the man responsible for him becoming a leggie — Abdul Qadir. Tahir speaks a lot about hunger, and he credits it for all his success. At 36, he’s already experienced the high of two World Cups and Tests. But his appetite remains as voracious as ever. If anything he is keen on replicating his guru.

“Last year he played a match on TV, he was 64, and took four wickets in four overs. I think along the same lines. I can still picture myself being 45 and wanting to improve as a leg-spinner,” says Tahir. You can be rest assured even then he will be running around manically, thumping his chest. But for now, Immy has a warning for those in Mumbai when his Delhi Daredevils come calling in the IPL.

“If I take a wicket against Mumbai Indians to win the match, I might just slip out of the ground take a local and disappear,” Tahir says.

So don’t be alarmed if you bump into him on a Dombivli Fast sometime this month. He’s simply doing it to prevent a heart-attack.

Tahir, in Numbers and Beyond

* Tahir’s first three County matches came for Middlesex in 2003 — where he took one wicket, which came off the third ball of his first over, for 196 runs. He didn’t play a County game for four years thereafter.

* Tahir’s parents dreamt of watching their son play international cricket, but unfortunately missed out on his debut for the Proteas. His dad passed away a couple of years prior to that, and his mother only a few months.

* Tahir initially rejected the offer from Hampshire because he feared they’ll only offer him a solitary game to prove his mettle like Middlesex had previously done. He took 45 wickets in 7 games after reconsidering his stance.

* Tahir considers getting Marcus Trescothick and Justin Langer out as having been his biggest challenges in County cricket.

* Tahir never throws away his gear because he never had a proper kit while growing up. This year he got rid of a thigh-pad after using it for three years because it had gotten smelly.

* Tahir was greatly disappointed when he wasn’t bought in the IPL auction for the sixth year running in 2014, but there was joy at hand, when his wife gave birth to their first child. He then was roped in as Delhi’s replacement player for six matches.

* He’s earned renown as the South African team’s official smoothie maker. He specializes in banana and apple.

Source:: Indian Express