NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
DIARY
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
PEOPLE
ARCHIVES

The Rediff Encounter/Wasim Jaffer

Man on the make

In the first instalment of a series on the young hopefuls of Indian cricket, Faisal Shariff seeks out the man who, opinion makers claim, could be the opener the Indian cricket team has been looking for.

22/175, Bazaar Road, Mumbai.

Not exactly the kind of address you track down in a hurry -- the place is the kind of warren even a rabbit would find difficult to negotiate.

Then you mention the name Wasim Jaffer and next thing you know, there are willing helpers thronging round, ready and eager to guide you to the cricketer's residence in a transit camp on Bandra Reclamation.

A young boy finally wins the battle for the 'honour' of being my guide, and since the way lasts more than the promised two minutes, I decide to ask him about Wasim.

"Who to apne saath khelta tha yehi gali me, bachpan se" (He used to play with us in this lane since childhood), is the reply. "Sab uske bhai ki mehnat hai, jo aaj Wasim ne itna naam kamaya" he adds.

We enter a dark lane, with nullahs flowing on either side, the foul smell from the open gutters permeating the atmosphere.

At the entrance to the house, we are greeted by a bearded gentleman. Salam valiakum, he says in greeting, ushering us in.

Finally, the person I am there to see arrives. He is tall, dark, little more than a boy, with short curly hair and clad in trousers and a T-shirt. "Was it easy, finding the place?" he asks. Politeness compels me to say yes.

One thing is clear already -- the media seeking out the local hero is a rarity. I see faces of kids, from adjacent houses, peering in through the grilled window of his home, checking out for themselves just what this 'interview' is all about.

Wasim has come a long way, cricketwise. From the gulleys of the Bandra Transit Camp, to the India A team that toured Pakistan. Today, he is being talked of as a potential opener at the international level.

Wasim was, I learn, educated at Bandra Urdu High School till the sixth form. Elder brother Kalim then decided to shift him to a school where his sibling's cricketing abilities could be nurtured, so Wasim found himself travelling all the way to VT, to Anjuman Islam School.

From then on, it was a triumphal progression up the ladder of noticeability. An innings of 400, in a little under a day and a half, against Marwadi Vidyalaya in the Giles' Shield quarterfinal. That led to a call up for Bombay Under-16, and that in turn led to a berth in the India Under-19.

It began to seem, at this point, that a family dream was on the way to fulfilment. Wasim's father, a bus driver by profession, always wanted one of his sons to aspire to national honours. Brother Kalim was himself an aspiring cricketer who even trained for a bit under none other than Ramakant Achrekar. However, the financial crunch at home ended those aspirations.

Kalim then determined that what he could not aspire to, his brother Wasim, youngest of a brood of four, would achieve.

"Sade charso tankhua thi meri 1978 mein jab Kalim ko bat dilana tha. Us mahine sari tankhua uska bat kharidne mein chali gayi", (My salary was Rs 450 in 1978, when Kalim's bat cost me my entire pay) the father recalls, with a rueful smile.

In his turn, Kalim decided to invest his entire monthly salary in his brother's cricketing future.

It is a story with a parallel -- Vinod Kambli, the raw talent that grew up in a slum in Kanjur Marg and made it to the big leagues the hard, hard way.

Wasim -- like Kambli, and Sachin, before him -- had a dream run in his first season in the Ranji Trophy competition, when he along with Amol Majumdar and Jatin Paranjpe formed the backbone of a strong Bombay side.

Interestingly, the Bombay coach of the time, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, however tells me that while he thinks Wasim is a talented player, he does not think the young right-hander is good enough to make it to the national team.

Sandhu bases his assessment on his perception that Wasim has technical shortcomings outside off stump. Thus, at the end of his first season with the Bombay team, Sandhu praised him and, simultaneously, warned him that the opposition must have worked him out, and that it was time he developed a counter strategy.

Sandhu in fact sounded rather bitter that Wasim paid little heed to his advice. "He is being influenced by someone else," Sandhu had told me at the time.

I discovered during the course of my interview with Wasim, that the hidden influence Sandhu referred to was none other than his elder brother, Kalim.

In this context, it is interesting to note that Wasim was dropped for the all-important semifinal against UP last year -- a match that turned out to be Bombay's worst defeat in years. The reason for his omission? It was felt by the team management that the young player had not batted properly in the nets.

Wasim had, at the time, just returned from the India A tour of Pakistan, where all but one of the 'Tests' had been rained out.

Wasim has been to England, on player contracts, on three occasions, and the reports of each of his forays was positive. But didn't it make more sense, I ask, to stay in India and keep himself in the reckoning? "When I was in England, it was during the off season here," Wasim counters, adding that he thought playing in England made him more responsible, toughened him, and helped him work on correcting his shortcomings.

In England, Wasim played in the Bradford League, scoring three centuries on the trot and helping his club lift the Heavy Wollen Cup, the oldest trophy played for in England.

Wasim says he has great memories of his stint in England. Once, while batting alongside Vinod Kambli, he scored a 148 -- going one better than his senior partner, who had weighed in with 147. Came the end of the match, and the adjudicators awarded Kambli the man of the match -- probably because he was the senior player, and a full-fledged international.

Kambli, in his flamboyant fashion, promptly, publicly, handed over the award to Jaffer, saying the youngster deserved it more.

Ask him about cricketing heroes, and Wasim is your typical wide-eyed youngster, raving about Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev. But his all time favourite, he says, is Vivian Richards.

Another player he holds in high esteem is Sachin Tendulkar, whose presence in the Bombay side, Wasim says, is a tremendous motivator. "I like reading biographies and autobiographies of cricket, it helps me motivate myself, play with passion, when I read of how the greats reached the pinnacle," he says.

While the big time has, till date, proved elusive -- interestingly, he is not even in the Challenger Series now going on -- cricket has brought him some measure of success. Wasim is currently employed as administration officer for Indian Oil Corporation, and is about to move into a flat given to him by his company -- the first step to putting the Bandra Reclamataion slum behind him.

What, however, keeps the youngster out of the India team? "Its all in his stars, he has the talent but it only remains to be seen if he is destined to play for his country," says brother Naeem, who drives an autorickshaw to supplement the family income. "Wasim does not have a godfather, unlike others," adds Kalim.

That a place in the national side is very much on his mind has been evident from the way Wasim has worked on his game. A natural strokeplayer by instinct, Wasim has in recent times curbed his shot selection, concentrating instead on grinding the bowlers down, staying for longer periods at the crease rather than trying to blast everything out of the park.

His stint with the Bombay team, he says, has helped toughen him as a person, given him a sense of purpose, a gritty determination to make a place for himself in the national team.

It is a determination that numerous setbacks have failed to dampen. The latest in the series came when he was not picked for the India A tour of Holland and Denmark.

"I am just 20 years old," says Wasim. "There is time."

Time to dream. Time, too, to seek the fulfilment of the dream?

"Inshallah!"

Statistics: Ranji Trophy Matches

Batting:

Matches	Inns	Not Outs	Runs	Highest	Avg	100s	50s	0s
7	10	4	692	314 *	115.33	2	3	-

Bowling:

Matches	Balls	Maidens	Runs	Wickets	5w	10w	Best	Eco. Rate
7	12	0	10	0	-	-	-	5.00

Fielding:

Matches	Catches	Stumped	Total
7	5	0	5

Statistics: Irani Trophy Matches

Batting:

Matches	Inns	Not Outs	Runs	Highest	Avg	100s	50s	0s
1	2	0	97	83	48.50	0	1	-

Fielding:

Matches	Catches	Stumped	Total
1	1	0	1

People

Photographs: Devyani Chandwadkar