The rise of Naveen-ul-Haq

SAM DALLING: Still only 21, the latest Afghan to emerge on the franchise scene has travelled the world and has agreed to join Leicestershire for this season's T20 Blast. This is his story so far

Naveen-ul-Haq is a man wise beyond his years. He has had to be.

As a child, his family was forced to flee their home in Kabul to escape his war-torn home nation. Soon after they returned from Pakistan, he was wearing Afghanistan colours abroad as an 11-year-old playing for the national under-16 side. By the time he was 15, he was representing Afghanistan Under-19s. Days after turning 17, he made his full international debut.

And perhaps that is why now – still only 21 – he already has the attitude of a seasoned veteran, having shaken the shackles of pressure and replaced them with a carefree spirit.

“A few years ago, if I had a game tomorrow I would be up until 3am,” he begins. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep as I would be thinking about what would happen if I didn’t bowl well or something went wrong. It was a problem.

“But in the last two years I have stopped all these things. It was hard to break out, but I had been playing cricket for seven or eight years, and asked myself whether I had been going out to enjoy it like I had imagined when I was a child, playing with my brother and dreaming of being a professional cricketer. And the answer was simple: I hadn’t enjoyed any of it. I had let the pressure and the tension of the results get in the way.

“I decided that day that I won’t worry about results anymore. Instead, I focus on what I can do and what is in my hands. Now I go to sleep early, wake up early and don’t care about the results. That is when I really started enjoying the game. I am at peace with it now. In one way it is good that at this age I have gone through that. It takes some professionals ten years to.”

Naveen was born in Kabul in 1999 but spent his formative years seeking refuge in Pakistan. At that point, Afghanistan was still several years from even obtaining associate status as an ICC member, and so growing up he supported India.

^{Naveen-ul-Haq in action for Afghanistan Under-19s}

Glued to the television whenever they were playing, he was raised on a diet of Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan. His own cricketing opportunities were limited. “Whenever India were playing, I would watch the match. That is where my passion and love for cricket started. My mother and father wouldn’t let us play cricket on the weekdays but at the weekend we could play tape-ball cricket outside our home for an hour or two.

“I was a batsman-wicketkeeper then, not a bowler. I hated bowling. I loved batting in tape-ball cricket.  My elder brother and I were always having cricket fights – if that is what you want to call it. We were never on the same team – always against each other. There was a rivalry in our home.”

It was not until the family had returned to Afghanistan that he first got to feel a leather ball in hand. “It was a random Friday and I went down and told my father that I wanted to start playing leather ball cricket and be a professional cricketer. He said: ‘No son, you can’t do that; you have to focus on your studies’. He is a doctor so he was always thinking you had to study.”

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Despondent, Naveen turned to his elder brother for some assistance. “I told him to go and convince my father to let me play. My father listens to him a lot but not to me. I don’t know what he said as I was outside the room just praying that my father would allow me a chance to do what I love.”

Whatever his brother said, it had the desired effect. Soon after, the pair headed to the National Cricket Academy, with his brother filling in the registration forms. Finally, Naveen was ready to be unleashed on the world.

“I still remember the first ball I bowled with the leather ball; I hit the top of the net with a beamer,” he laughs. “I thought it was going to be the same as the tape ball but realised it was totally different. I kept my eyes away from the coach and when I spoke to him I told him I didn’t have the proper shoes, and that I had slipped. He moved me to the juniors’ net and told me to practise.”

^{Naveen is following in the footsteps of Mohammad Nabi by thriving on the franchise circuit}

For the next few weeks, Naveen regularly headed to the academy once school finished, quickly adjusting to the weight and feel of his new weapon.  “Within a month I was bowling very well. One day the coach came and said I should be bowling with the seniors.”

A few weeks later he arrived at practice to find snaking queues.  Tapping a stranger on the shoulder, he discovered that they were registering for a trial for the under-16 national team.

“I didn’t know what ‘trial’ meant but I stood in the fast bowlers’ line and registered. It was an open trial so there were about 500 or so there.  I bowled three deliveries and the coach said ‘thank you, you don’t need to bowl anymore’.

“I was sad because I thought they didn’t like my bowling. That evening they announced the 50 players to come back and play the trial matches the next day. I was in that list. I think I maybe only got one wicket in the trial games, but my name was in the squad for the under-16s. I didn’t know what was happening next or what the squad was going to do.”

He would find out his first assignment: a trip to the 2010 Asian Cricket Council U-16 Challenge Cup in Malaysia. He had just a week’s notice and his lack of passport threatened scupper his trip. Fortunately, his brother had friends in a position to help expedite his application. And so aged just 11, and only months after first taking up the game, Naveen flew to Penang to represent his country.

“I don’t want to remember that tournament,” he says, recalling his solitary wicket in three games. “After every game, my family would call and ask how it went. I would tell them it was a great match and I bowled really well but then when they asked me how many wickets I got, I would say ‘no wickets’. I would tell them I was bowling quickly and doing everything but the bowler at the other end, much slower than me and not swinging it, was picking up four to five wickets.”

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Perhaps too young for perspective, so disheartened was Naveen that when he returned home he decided to return to his tape-ball roots and become a top-order batsman, who bowled off-breaks.

“I thought my fast bowling was not good enough so I batted and batted for a year. I was always scoring runs. But then I realised that if I wanted to be a professional cricketer, it would not be like this. I had gone to a tournament as a fast bowler and so started taking fast bowling seriously.”

Two years later, Naveen was at the same tournament again; it could hardly have gone better. His 15 wickets collectively cost just 69 runs and he was named bowler of the tournament. Full, fast and straight was his mantra, each of his dismissals earned by hitting the stumps. China’s wall was destroyed on his way to 5 for 2, while the Maldives were also blown away, taking 4 for 1. Afghanistan lifted the trophy, beating Qatar in the final.

Soon afterwards, and still just 15, Naveen helped Afghanistan take the ACC Under-19 Premier League 2014 crown. His 16 wickets – which cost only 6.5 runs each – meant he topped the bowling charts, teammate Rashid Khan finishing below him. Victory earned qualification for the 2016 Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh.

Ahead of that tournament, Afghanistan defended their ACC Under-19 title, but Naveen played just three of the five games, although still took eight wickets. Come the World Cup, the closest he got to meaningful action was a warm-up game.

Frustrated, he gave himself an ultimatum: “I sat down with my family and told them I was only going to give it one more year,” he explains. “I would give 110 per cent effort on and off the field in every part of the game. I said: ‘If I do well my results will come and I will continue playing cricket but if it doesn’t happen I will quit.’

^{Naveen impressed during the Lanka Premier League}

“They said I didn’t have to do that, but I had already made up my mind. This was it. I needed to do something about it. I had no coaches, but I hired a personal trainer and was hitting the gym for four hours a day. I could barely walk when I finished. I had gained some weight that I needed to lose so I was on a strict diet – no cheat days. If I couldn’t make it, I was going planning on leaving the country to study or work. I didn’t want to stay in Afghanistan.”

Naveen’s next tournament was the Shpageeza T20, Afghanistan’s domestic 20-over competition. He had enjoyed a solid first season for the Band-e-Amir Dragons in 2015 but, having vowed to throw everything into it, he lit up the 2016 event.

Only Rashid claimed more wickets than his 13, while he took more than twice as many as teammate Mohammad Nabi.

By September, Naveen one of three uncapped players from the Under-19 World Cup squad called up to the full side. Of the other two, Ihsanullah had been captain and Karim Janat had led the run-scoring. Rashid Khan had debuted the year before.

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And so just two days after turning 17, Naveen made his ODI debut against Bangladesh. It was just eight months since he had questioned whether cricket was his long-term plan after a tournament in the same country. “I had played in front of 6,000 or 7,000 before but this was something else for me,” he recalls of the first game in Dhaka.

“It was a packed Mirpur Stadium – noisy and there were about 30,000 people there. It was that loud I couldn’t hear myself. I knew what I was saying because I was saying it but I couldn’t hear my voice. It wasn’t a good debut for me but I loved it.”

Naveen started well, taking 1 for 62 from his 10 overs, including the wicket of Mahmudullah. Three days later he picked up the same man, this time on his way to 1 for 49. But he was dropped for the third match and not selection for the tour of Zimbabwe early in 2017.

He returned to domestic action in the Shpageeza T20, switching allegiances to the Mis Ainak Knights only to suffer defeat to his former employers in the final. The dangers of life in Kabul were highlighted when a suicide bomber killed several people at a security checkpoint while Knights were playing Boost Defenders.

^{He has signed for Leicestershire ahead of this year's T20 Blast}

Early in 2018, he led Afghanistan to a fourth-placed finish at U19 World Cup in New Zealand. They might even have gone one better had the rain not washed out their third placed play-off game with Pakistan.

“I played two games for the national team and then got left out but I came back as the captain of the Under-19 team. Eight months before, I hadn’t been picked in the playing XI and suddenly I had to lead the squad. That was an interesting journey!”

Next came the inaugural Afghanistan Premier League, in which Naveen represented Jalalabad’s Nangarhar Leaopards. After impressing with his hostility, quirky action and array of slower balls, his name was starting to attract attention but it would be almost a year before he next played T20: on 21 September 2019 he became the 36th man capped by Afghanistan in T20Is, debuting against Bangladesh in Chattogram.

A month on, his 10 wickets helped Knights gain revenge over the Dragons in the Shpageeza T20 tournament. That led to selection for the ODI and T20I squads that visited India to take on the West Indies, where he picked up five wickets in three 20-over appearances and a further four in two ODIs.

His rising stock led to a first taste of overseas franchise cricket came for Sylhet Thunder in the Bangladesh Premier League, and during the pandemic, Naveen has featured in the Caribbean Premier League for Guyana Amazon Warriors and the Lanka Premier League  for Kandy Tuskers. “It was my dream to go out of Afghanistan and see the rest of the world,” he adds.

“I wanted to see what others think about the game, see how they play, share the dressing room with them. I wanted to know what their rituals are, what they do off the field and on the field, how they behave. I wanted to go and show my abilities. Luckily in the past two years I have played a number of leagues and I can say proudly I have done something in the franchises.”

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And it was during that stint in Sri Lanka the world got to see Naveen’s competitive edge. Away from the game he is known as a smiler, but, like countless quicks before him, he has a feisty streak. That was evident during a clash with Mohammad Amir late in a clash between Tuskers and Galle Gladiators.

“It was in the moment,” he says. “Amir came out to bat and they were losing the match. My first delivery he swung so hard but missed the ball. I smiled and asked him how big a six he wanted to hit – I made a joke and he took it seriously. I am competitive from the first ball to the last ball but after the match I don’t have anything for anybody in my heart. He is a good a player, a good cricketer.

“People say I am not like that off the pitch – I smile, I joke around with my friends. I am not that serious. But once I am on the ground I am quite serious, whether I am playing franchise cricket or representing my country.”

The exchange of words continued after the game and Shahid Afridi, a teammate of Amir’s stepped in to speak to Naveen. There was no bowing to status. “If someone is saying something to me I won’t back off. I have had it from childhood. It comes naturally to me. I wouldn’t be speaking truthfully if I said from tomorrow I would change it. If I said that I would back off when someone says something to me, I can’t say I wouldn’t do it. It is in my body. It is in my DNA.”

This summer, Naveen will experience county cricket for the first time. Following in the foot holes of countryman Nabi, Naveen has joined Leicestershire for the Vitality Blast. He would have come last summer, only for Trinidad & Tobago – where the CPL was taking place – to be added to mandatory quarantine list by the UK government days after he had signed for the Foxes.

^{Long-time teammate Rashid Khan has set the standard for young Afghan players on the franchise scene}

He is set to be available for the entire Blast, although it will not be the first time he has visited England. He has close friends in London and uses the city like the wealthy use Swiss bank accounts; for anonymity. “Cricket is now the first sport in Afghanistan,” he says.

“Everyone watches it - they see every game and people know who I am. In Afghanistan I have to think about where I am going, who I am going with, how I am sitting, where I am sitting. You can’t talk with friends openly sitting in a restaurant, laughing or doing what you want. You have to take care of all of these things. Sometimes it is hard but I am used to it now. When I am in England we can do all that. I am not a player, nobody knows me here. Everyone has their own life. That is why I love it in England. If I need a break and to rest my body I go there.”

Naveen also hopes to use his time in England to finally meet fast bowling mentor Ian Pont. In a very 21st century arrangement, the pair have worked together remotely for nearly two years having been matched up by Naveen’s manager, Kaustav Lahiri.

The quick credits Pont – a renowned pace bowling coach – for helping him make several subtle yet significant adjustments to his action. Pont, for his part, was surprised to see Naveen go unsolid in last month’s Indian Premier League auction, but a trip to India could still happen later in the year with Afghanistan having qualified for the T20 World Cup in October. Naveen, whose past back issues make him an unlikely Test candidate, is happy to wait and see.

“It is simple to me: if I get a chance to be out there representing my country, I will give my best. Let’s hope for the best and I can contribute to a winning team. It is the format that I love and I have played around the world now in it. Afghanistan have given me a chance and I have done my best. As a player that is all you can do. The selection committee and management have to make the call.”

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