The years of graft pay off for Kashif Ali

A fortnight is a long time in cricket.

Originally, when The Cricketer was planning to talk to Kashif Ali two weeks ago, the 24-year-old could lay claim to being the best player in the country without a professional contract.

By the time the phone call happened, however, that was no longer the case. And now, as Kashif embarks on life as a Worcestershire player, this conversation can take a celebrational tone.

"I'm just very pleased and blessed," he says, speaking with the genuine joy of a dream come true.

Kashif signed a deal last week, initially until the end of the season, and made his T20 Blast debut later the same day: a no-brainer to the extent that it's hard to know why it's taken so long.

His answer to that question is both diplomatic and respectful: "I don't think I know or am in a position to answer that, but I have no idea. I don't really know why."

The crux of it is this, however: there was never a moment when he considered chasing a different ambition, never a point in time when he didn't believe this would eventually arrive. "All I knew was I wasn't going to stop," he says, "because I'd done all the hard work and just had to keep on going. I wasn't going to stop. For all those hard years that I fought through, it wouldn't have made sense to stop now.

"I've always believed in my hard work, and I've put in a lot of hard work over the years because I so wanted to make it and to play at the highest level. I always thought it couldn't be too far away, because I'd always back my ability and my hard work. If you back your ability and you know you're good enough, then you have to keep on going, knowing that it will come through."

^{Kashif Ali has joined Worcestershire on a deal until the end of the season (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)}

Kashif had never played hard-ball cricket until he was 15, having moved from Pakistan to England five years earlier and instead grown up on a diet of tape-ball and street cricket. He was spotted and came through the age-group teams at Bedfordshire, for whom he has played in National Counties competitions.

Word got out when he was in sixth form at college and starred in a game that happened to be taking place under the eye of Essex scouts. They asked him to trial for the academy, and then he impressed in a second-team game against Kent, who repeated the trick and asked him to trial with them. Around the same time, the MCC Young Cricketers came calling.

"That was my first real breakthrough," as he puts it.

This has been a slow process, though. By definition, trialling is a tribulation; ask anyone bold enough to have put themselves through the ringer, and they will give you the same response. It's a tough, brutal school: hours on the road, travelling from faraway ground to faraway ground, never sure whether you're there to make up the numbers or for a legitimate shot at a future in the game.

As it stands, he has represented exactly a third of the first-class spectrum at second-team level. Most of that time was spent with Essex and Kent, but there were early appearances for Leicestershire in 2017 and a spell with Nottinghamshire in 2019 that included two separate unbeaten hundreds. "But I just wasn't getting offered anything."

This summer, he ended the second-team T20 tournament as its third-highest run-scorer, having impressed with both Northamptonshire and Worcestershire. He lists Kadeer Ali, Worcestershire's second-team coach – "who always believed in me" – as a major source of support. And then came the offer after "four or five years of trying".

It's been an open secret all summer, and in years before, that there have been few better players – if any – plying their trade beneath the county ladder. When he became frustrated last year, he flew to Pakistan – the country of his birth – to trial for a place in the Kashmir Premier League. They liked what they saw, and he ended a strong T20 tournament fourth in the run-scoring stakes.

Of the three men more prolific, Shan Masood and Sharjeel Khan are both bona fide international cricketers. And yet, Kashif was a perennial trialist with a story to root for.

^{Kashif lists Bilal Shafayat and Kadeer Ali among those who have helped him in reaching this point (Laurence Griffiths, Michael Steele/Getty Images)}

He will only speak positively of life on the periphery, having taken some time before it clicked to work out a successful method in a ruthless subsection of the professional game. "It's tough when you feel like it's not quite enough," he admits.

"There are times when you think the doors aren't open yet or there's no place for you. But trialling helps you to play under pressure. I think that's how I felt – it helped me quite a lot; you're always under the pump and wanting to do well. It makes you stronger mentally. So, when I went into the Kashmir Premier League, that was it: I didn't really think much about it, but it helped me and I went out there to be myself, and it came out all right.

"If you believe in yourself or believe in your ability, then obviously you're confident enough to keep on going. I could have easily gone: 'Oh, man, this is too long. I can't keep on doing this.' There were times when I did well in one game but nothing came through.

"But I always thought that I'd have one of those innings that would be eye-catching and people would see that I've got the ability to play at the highest level. I've put a lot of hard yards in."

He is conscious that he is not alone in having pushed himself for an opportunity, and that the stars have aligned in his case where for others they haven't yet. But it must be incredibly difficult to do as he committed to doing – putting together the kind of "eye-catching" innings he talks about in a trial situation, knowing you're being watched at all times and a failed risk might mark the end.

Over time, he has made sense of that conundrum. At first, he struggled: "I thought quite a lot about my cricket." But he drew a line at the start of 2021, when he decided that he'd been putting too much pressure on his shoulders and instead opted to enjoy the experience. "I decided not to overthink stuff," he explains. "That released a lot of pressure."

That approach was vindicated in Pakistan, where he played under the captaincy of Shahid Afridi and excelled to the point where onlookers had no choice but to take notice. In the eliminator, he smashed 114 off 51 deliveries in a chase of 237.

In the final, against Mohammad Hafeez, Sohaib Maqsood, Sohail Akhtar and Sohail Tanvir, he smashed a rapid half-century. He calls that month – August 2021 – "massive, huge". It was his first time on camera and the highest-profile shop window of his life. By then, he was conditioned against expecting too much: "I just wanted to enjoy it and play my game, do what I know best."

^{Shahid Afridi captained Kashif in the Kashmir Premier League (Asif Hassan/AFP via Getty Images)}

It was a return home. Kashif was born in Kashmir and grew up as a budding fast bowler who "never used to like batting" until back injuries altered his ambitions. There is a fascinating irony here in a story that feels like a lengthy odyssey to this point, when in fact he only properly started seven or eight years ago, watching others' batting for inspiration.

Looking back on it now, he can't help but laugh at how things have worked out. He recalls struggling initially as he made the transition from street cricketer to pathway talent, learning as he went about what was expected of him. "I wasn't in a professional setup and didn't know how to look after myself, I'd never played hard-ball cricket before – it probably worked out in my favour."

He reels off those who have played their part in helping him to reach this point. He namechecks Bilal Shafayat, the former Nottinghamshire batter, and Eddie Ballard, his head coach at Bedfordshire. Playing with Moeen Ali, Kadeer's brother, on his Worcestershire debut was another landmark moment. "I've always seen him on TV," he says. "For me, sharing a ground with him, sharing a changing room with him was amazing."

You get a sense from listening to Kashif that he will never forget these cricketing roots. He played for Finchley in Middlesex, Dunstable Town in Hertfordshire, West Indian Cavaliers in Nottinghamshire and Seaton Carew in Durham. "There have been quite a few people who've helped me a lot," he says, "and they were amazing because when you're trialling and you're a bit down, you look up at those people."

He reserves particular praise for Tom Brown, who co-founded the South Asian Cricket Academy last year as a means of funnelling the best untapped talent from an underrepresented demographic in the United Kingdom into county pathways. Kashif is the first to sign on the dotted line, but plenty of others – with and without prior county exposure – have impressed in second-team outings and ought not to be far behind.

He was in Pakistan when Brown and Kabir Ali – now Yorkshire's bowling coach – first got in touch, and they encouraged him to stay put for as long as possible so he'd be in good rhythm on his return to get back to trialling.

"Someone like him opening the programme to help players with the ability to play county cricket has been a massive, massive help," he says.

"SACA have opened a lot of doors for a lot of players who want to make it and are trying to make it, and I honestly think that there's a lot of talent there and a lot of very good cricketers, who are very much capable of playing county cricket. I really hope that, and I really wish them the very best of luck. I'm really pleased that they're doing well, and I really hope that they make it."

Related Topics

• First SACA graduate gets pro deal as Kashif Ali joins Worcestershire