The sadness of Mohammad Ashraful

NICK FRIEND: As he gazes out of the window of this high-rise apartment onto a skyline that reveals a world far from home, therein lies the inherent sadness of Ashraful. How did it all come to this?

Ultimately, what was it all for?

The years of dreaming, the nights spent in bed playing out the future in his mind, the lonely two-hour walks – to training and then back home, the days spent as a ball boy – separated from his heroes by no more than a boundary rope.

And once all that paid off, there were the moments that encapsulated the extraordinary rise of Mohammad Ashraful, flashes of brilliance that added tragedy to a most wasteful fall.

There was the century on Test debut; the match-winning hundred against Australia – an ODI knock for the ages; a 52-ball 94 against England – a takedown whose aesthetics were worth far more than its final value; the unbeaten 158 against India; the 190 in Galle – an exhibition of both batsmanship and showmanship that lies among the last throes of his international career.

His record as a batsman was never that of a great player, but rather of a player of great innings. There have been few in Bangladesh’s short lifespan as a Test nation – certainly in their early years – that have flourished with such style, operating without any complex of inferiority.

But then, that’s not the whole story. Cricket wishes it could be. This subcontinental Peter Pan: the boy who never grew up – he is as slight in build now as he was then, on the day that he became Test cricket’s youngest centurion.

In 2013, Ashraful admitted to his involvement in a spot-fixing and match-fixing scandal in the Bangladesh Premier League. An initial eight-year ban was reduced to five, with the final two suspended. He resumed his domestic career in 2016, becoming eligible to return to international cricket once more last year.

He has the same thirst now to represent Bangladesh that he did as an obsessed child, though he knows his own mistakes have made what was once a foregone conclusion an unlikely pipedream.

His face has not aged, but he has grown an understanding of himself and his missteps. The precocious wunderkind is a different man, without the beguiling innocence of youth.

We meet on the 21st floor of an apartment block in east London; it belongs to his friend. He has spent the summer playing club cricket in Kent. As he gazes out of the window onto a skyline that reveals a world far from home, therein lies the inherent sadness of Ashraful. How did it all come to this?

“It’s true,” he sighs after a pause.

Sometimes, it’s not about what you say, but rather how you say it. And Ashraful is a profound interviewee; his eyes begin to well up as he reflects on the self-destructive decision that would change his life and dismantle his reputation. It is the oldest of adages: tough to build, easy to destroy.

“Still people say to me: ‘We watched your Australia innings, your South Africa innings’. Still people say: ‘Last night I saw your 94 against England.’”

^{Ashraful remains Test cricket's youngest centurion}

He smiles. It makes him happy, but there is an almost farcical facade to it all. He has learnt to believe in the nostalgia because, faced with a self-created mess, he has had little choice. “It was 2005 then and it’s 2019 now. People still watch me. And they enjoy it.”

That is not to say the satisfaction is feigned – it isn’t. You can see the fulfilment on Ashraful’s face. That, in a sense, is the great frustration. What remain are singular moments, individual shots, brief recollections. It could – and should – have been so much more. His natural talent was immense, a hook shot not dissimilar to that of Ricky Ponting. His small frame would pounce on anything that dared climb above his hip.

Why, then, did his story have to go as it went?

“Now, there are all these worldwide franchise tournaments,” Ashraful says. “That’s why players need to be strict. In franchise tournaments, anything can happen. Everybody knows. Players need to be strict and they need to say: ‘No, this is not going to happen’.

“For young cricketers, they need to say ‘no’ straight away. Otherwise, it’s difficult.”

The temptation, he argues, came from pressure. Shihab Jishan Chowdhury, the managing director of Ashraful’s Dhaka Gladiators side, was banned for 10 years for his own part in the scandal.

“If I say no, they’re never going to play me – they’re going to drop me,” he explains, referring to those above him at the franchise and the need to please.

“That’s why [it happened]; I was thinking: ‘I need to play, I need to play’. There, I was wrong. Nowadays, anti-corruption is more active. Players have seen what has happened to players and what has happened to players’ careers.

“But, I’m very lucky that I still get to play. I need to learn from that era. I wish that nobody is ever trapped like that. I want nobody to go through it like me.”

There is little mitigation for Ashraful’s actions, a national hero whose involvement in a web of corruption affected those around him and broke the hearts of those who worshipped the very sight of his name. For a young Test-playing nation, he was its great hope.

If Aminul Islam, his own idol, was the trailblazer who struck a century on his country’s Test bow, Ashraful was the flagbearer for a brighter future. And then, he was gone.

His plea now is exactly as it was then. Soon after being charged, he begged his once-adoring public for compassion. “I seek forgiveness from all of you for all the wrong-doings that I have committed,” he pleaded in 2013. “I am ashamed of what I have done.”

Six years on, he leans forward on his friend’s sofa and shakes his head. He pulls a wry expression – it is more wince than smile. There is a long pause as he searches for the right words. It is an awkward topic, but one he is happy enough to broach. He knows he has to.

Among the terms of his reduced sentence was that he would assist in anti-corruption activities. After all, few are better placed to talk about its effects. He has been involved in one preventative video back in Bangladesh and would like to do more.

^{Ashraful's supporters have continued to adore their hero}

“In my whole career, that was my one mistake,” he admits. “It was tough for me – for five years, I couldn’t play international cricket.

“When they asked me [what had happened], I straight away told them. I can’t tell a lie. I knew at that time it was going to be tough for me to come back again. But still, I felt that I had to tell the truth.

“If they believed me, then maybe they would give me another chance to play. I don’t know if it helped me, but now I feel good in myself. I made one mistake, but now everybody knows.”

Ashraful acknowledges that there will be many who refuse to either forgive or forget. “That’s life,” he shrugs, still with the same emotion. You sense it is this – the loss of adulation – that hit Ashraful hardest during his spell beyond the sidelines. Once upon a time a legend in-waiting, he had, in some quarters, become a pariah.

When the ban kicked in, he was forced to find meaning elsewhere; he went on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca, before marrying his now-wife a year later. He spent some time in USA, playing every Saturday and Sunday in what he describes as “unofficial cricket”. In effect, it was the closest he could get to his game. He had failed his sport and this was the consequence.

“A few times, I was thinking: ‘I will die,’” he recalls. “I would ask myself: ‘How am I going to deal with people?’ People love me so much, so now how can I deal with this? I was thinking of suicide and these things.

“Then my sister’s husband told me: ‘Don’t think like that. People make mistakes. You will realise. You have told everything with honesty.’ He just said: ‘Don’t think like that.’”

Ashraful mentions Mohammad Azharuddin, the former India captain whose own international career was ended by a match-fixing scandal. The 56-year-old has gone on to enjoy a political career. It does not make Azharuddin a blueprint – there is no such thing in this context, but his story gave Ashraful a buffer against his sense of worthlessness.

“Time changes everything,” he adds, smiling once more. “The cricket board CEO supported me a lot. He saw it that way – that time would change everything, so deal with that time. ‘What you did, you did. And you apologised for it,’ he would tell me.”

He dreams of another chance – the timing of the Bangladeshi domestic season gives him the opportunity to stake a T20 World Cup claim.

“With what I have done in my life, if I could come back and play [for the national team] that would be my most important thing,” he confesses.

The sadness, of course, is that it never had to be this way.

“Seventeen years, sixty-three days,” he recites, interrupting a question about his finest hour. It is the nature of Ashraful, a story told through melancholy. There are few who peak as early as this, few whose greatest hour is the very first hour.

He became Test cricket’s youngest ever centurion that day in Colombo, five days before 9/11. Younger than Mushtaq Mohammad, younger than Sachin Tendulkar, younger than Hamilton Masakadza – the game’s three other 17-year-old hundred-makers.

“When I played against Sri Lanka, I was playing as a bowler – as a leg-spinner,” Ashraful says. It was only Bangladesh’s fifth Test.

“In the first innings, I scored 26 batting at seven. I handled Muralitharan very well. We had been bowled out for 90 in the first innings. Then it rained. We lost four wickets quite early in the second innings and the captain told me to go at six because I had played Muralitharan well.”

^{Ashraful has never given up hope of representing Bangladesh again}

The 1998 Champions Trophy had been held in Bangladesh. Indirectly, at least, he credits this tournament with his own emergence, even if he was too young to be taking part.

“One of my friends who was an off-spinner got to learn with Saqlain Mushtaq how to bowl a doosra,” he explains. “He learned it and then bowled it really well. I used to face him in the nets, so it became easy for me to pick Murali’s doosra.

“I remember, Jayasuriya was the captain and he was at slip – every time Murali bowled a doosra, I picked it. And they were very attacking – two slips, two silly fielders. So, there were lots of gaps. When he bowled the doosra, I just dabbed two or dabbed four.” He lights up as he reminisces on the occasion that first made him.

"Jayasuriya would say to Murali: ‘Bowl a doosra.’ Murali just said: ‘He is picking everything.’

“I always told myself I was never going to be scared of how fast anyone bowled or who they were. I was going to play my game. I always told myself never to be scared – that I would go and play my shots.

“If you look at my career, all the averages are in the 20s, but because of those few innings there are people who still love me in Bangladesh and abroad. I was lucky, I feel. Even if I averaged 22 or 20, I had those moments. When I scored runs, I scored like an international top player.”

It is one of the great quirks of Ashraful; his runs never came in spite of himself, but a player of his talent should palpably have achieved more than he did. A Test average of 24, an ODI average of 22.23, a T20I average of 19.56.

Feast your eyes on a reel of his finest knocks – his hundred against Australia that both made and defied history, for one – and try convincing yourself that the man you are watching ended up with a record so statistically mediocre. Or worse still, that he would end up disgraced and his name besmirched.

Recent years have given Ashraful, a cricket obsessive, the chance to look back to a curious childhood and the unique pressures under which he lived.

Family support has been as crucial now as it was in the early years. Yet, he wonders whether he was ever truly prepared for any of it – the adulation, the fame, the pressure, the responsibility.

“It was very hard,” he sighs. “After my debut, I felt that every game I had to score a hundred. That doesn’t happen in cricket. Really, it was tough for me. It’s one thing having people recognise me after that first game, but it was a bad thing because I didn’t realise that it wasn’t going to happen like that in every game.”

Prior to his Test bow, he had made five separate centuries in no time at all. To a gifted teenager, this was the life. He knew no failure.

“You have to work hard,” he adds. “I needed better man management. Everybody – the selectors, the cricket board – was thinking that I could score the runs. There was too much pressure. If I scored zero, it was still in the newspaper – a picture would say ‘Ashraful scores zero’. Everything in the next two or three years was crazy. I didn’t take that pressure well. I wasn’t ready for it.

“I feel like if I had got good man management, it would have been better for me. Now I realise – I couldn’t handle it.”

He returns to his childhood; his father was a politician; his parents granted his cricketing dream their full support, allowing the young Ashraful the freedom to do as he pleased.

“From my home to where I practiced, I would walk for two and a half hours each way,” he says. “Because my coach used to walk, I thought that I had to walk because I needed to be in his good book.

“I worked really hard to become a cricketer. Everything that I did was alone. My parents never came to the practice. I used to go and watch cricket with my cousin. He saw in the newspaper that there was an under-12 camp starting and he told me to go and practice there. I went alone. For three months, I would go.

“My coach took 60 players to his own academy – everything free. Still now, it is free. Every time, all the boys’ parents would go with them but I would go alone. That is why I feel I had that bravery. My family gave me that freedom to go alone. I did everything myself.”

And we return to where we began. Ultimately, what was it all for?