Pakistan’s latest spin sensation Yasir Shah, shares a rather uncanny resemblance to Lionel Messi. In an anecdote Yasir jokes about how an immigration officer once questioned him regarding the photo on his passport which mirrors the Argentine, the perils of resembling a football star.
Yasir who recently helped Pakistan demolish Australia isn’t their newest poster boy yet, and seems to have a decent sense of humour about it all. According to dawn.com, he was quoted saying, ” An Emirates immigration officer once looked at my passport and said, ‘Why do you have Messi’s photo here?, I had to show him my identification mark and cricket photos to convince him otherwise.”
Although Yasir needn’t have looked much further than Mushtaq Ahmed for guidance but he draws his biggest inspiration from Australia’s champion leg spinner, Shane Warne. subsequent to his impressive debut against Australia, Warne heaped praise on the leggie, which is a huge vote of confidence.
Every young Cricketer models himself after his heroes, the same was the case with Yasir who grew up idolizing Warne, it was why he took to cricket and why he chose to bowl leg spin
“It was during the Carlton and United series of 1996-97. I would wake up in the middle of the night for every Pakistan match and by the end of the series I knew I wanted to be a cricketer.” He also jokes about his initial struggles with the art of leg spin bowling, “I used to bowl from half-way down the pitch… the ball wouldn’t reach the wicket otherwise”
He watched videos of Warne’s guide to leg spin bowling to try and pick up useful pointers, “I would listen to his tips and instructions in those videos and tried to follow the way he bowled… everything from basic leg-spin to flippers and top-spin.”
The reason why his bowling action doesn’t resemble Warne’s anymore lies in his visit to National Cricket academy Where Aaqib Javed instructed him to tweak his bowling action to enable him to impart more turn on his deliveries and achieve accuracy.
“The more a bowler is in control of his body while delivering the ball, the better the delivery. So our aim was to improve his control, which led to making a few modifications to his original action.” said Aaqib
Yasir’s initial Journey was marred with scepticism, To begin with he faced opposition from the family on being noticed missing from the mosque to play cricket but his commitment and performances on the field made it impossible for his father to not appreciate that Yasir in fact had all the ingredients to play for Pakistan one day. It was recognised soon that to develop his game further, Yasir must play a more competitive form of cricket than he was at the time. He remembers, “I played in Swabi for almost two years before my cousin took me to a cricket academy in Peshawar, where I spent another couple of years before finally getting the call for Pakistan’s U15 side.”
He unfortunately missed the boat to the under-15 tour due to injury but as luck would have it he was soon to be selected in the under-19 side instead, which was a massive step up considering he rubbed shoulders with Salman Butt and Umar Gul there who also went on to represent Pakistan.
he said, “All this time, I kept practicing in Peshawar, where I received a lot of support from the seniors (moral and in the form of kits), who told me I would play Test cricket for Pakistan one day”
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