The rising stock of Mohammad Ilyas, whose life has changed with the Pakistan Super League

NICK FRIEND: Mohammad Ilyas had played just five first-class games when he was picked up by Multan Sultans in the 2019 PSL draft as an emerging player. He has impressed all who have seen him since and, fifteen months on, the world is his oyster

Mohammad Ilyas is one of franchise cricket’s success stories: a child of Peshawar, whose life changed on a draft pick.

“Beforehand, there was no free food,” he jokes, sitting and chatting with a glint in his eye. Twelve appearances into his Multan Sultans career, there is talk of Pakistan. It is a different universe for a 20-year-old who has impressed all with whom he has come into contact.

“I used to stand in lines and now I don’t have to stand in lines,” he adds with a smile. “A 15-minute walk from my house now takes me 45 because people stop me on the way and they take pictures with me. They ask me how I am and they offer me free food.

“I used to go out with the seniors and people would take their pictures and not mine. Now, I feel like I’m part of that list.”

Ilyas is getting to grips with fame. It comes with the territory of existing as a young fast bowler in a country obsessed and blessed with a seemingly never-ending supply.

A list of names including Mohammad Amir, Shaheen Afridi, Mohammad Hasnain, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf, Usman Shinwari, Muhammad Musa and several others is beginning to feature his own.

There is a confident disposition to the youngster, who has taken everything so far in his stride. Little has phased him.

And his name will forever be attached to the first Pakistan Super League game ever played in Multan. A northern boy, he will always have a home in South Punjab.

On a hugely significant evening that signified so much more than a single game of cricket, Ilyas – his side’s emerging player pick in the draft for the 2019 tournament and retained for 2020 – lit up the occasion.

His first over had cost him eight runs as Kamran Akmal drove him through cover for a boundary. He was taken out of the attack, replaced by two experienced campaigners – Mohammad Irfan and then Sohail Tanvir, two men who have walked the international path that, one day, Ilyas is desperate to take himself.

He returned for the final over of the powerplay and a switch was flicked. Multan ignited - an image, if one was needed, to illustrate all that Pakistan has missed in the absence of top-level cricket. Raw, fervent emotion. A chance for a population to properly meet its stars of the future.

First, Ilyas enticed Shoaib Malik to edge behind to a delivery that pitched and nibbled away from the allrounder. Two balls later, a carbon copy. Wide on the crease, angling in and then zipping away off the surface. Another edge behind, Liam Livingstone the man in the firing line on this occasion. Scenes.

And in that moment, a relationship was forged: Ilyas and Multan, Ilyas and Pakistan. For all the functionality of previous editions of the PSL, held mostly out in United Arab Emirates, they could never do this. He ran, arms aloft, to Imran Tahir – doyen of the celebration. In this circus of passion, a rookie was its ringmaster.

“He’s got everything,” Azhar Mahmood, bowling coach at Multan Sultans, tells The Cricketer. “I’ve worked on a few technical issues with him – he was collapsing his front leg.

“He’s got the potential to play for Pakistan, there’s no doubt about that. The way he’s working, if he keeps that up, he will be pushing the door of the Pakistan team sooner rather than later.”

^{Mohammad Ilyas (right) in action against Islamabad United}

Growing up, Ilyas saw himself as a swing bowler and there was a time when he would watch footage of James Anderson and Mohammad Asif in search of inspiration and perfection. Others remarked of an action that carried a smattering of Brett Lee in its gather at the crease.

“Before I got picked, I would take training casually,” he recalls, swapping his earlier laughter for a moment of reflection on an unlikely journey.

“I would bowl off two steps sometimes, I wouldn’t go to the gym like I do now. When I got into the PSL, suddenly I could see a clear path to what I wanted to do, which was to get into the Pakistan team. Professionally, where I used to give 50 per cent in training and in terms of how I used to think about it, I started to give 100 per cent.”

There is a wider significance to all this for Ilyas. He is one of 17 siblings, with ten brothers and six sisters. It is their collective love that has allowed him to chase his dream, safe in the reassurance that they are waiting for him.

“I actually am where I am today because of my family,” he continues. “This big family really played a big part in it. My brothers told me not to worry about it and to play cricket.

“In Pakistan, the normal story is that you play for two years and nothing happens, so you go to find work. Because you have to earn. But they just said: ‘Don’t worry about it. Keep playing cricket.’ They always supported me.

“And my parents always supported me. My father is a religious guy and he was always there. Both my mothers and sisters would keep fasts when I would go and play. When you take a prayer, you take a fast sometimes. It’s like a high-level prayer. They would do religious rituals for me to succeed. All of this combined to play a big part.”

Ever since the PSL came along, their normality has altered too. Wherever they go, they are greeted with respect merely by association – there is a far-reaching pride in all that their brother and son has achieved.

It is a remarkable tale – not unique, but a reminder of the transformational power of competitions like this. For all the razzmatazz and huge names involved, these tournaments will one day be judged by the impact they have closer to home.

For the ten months of each year when the overseas talent is nowhere to be seen, that’s what is left – the likes of Ilyas and all that they’ve learnt and reaped from their experiences. His Sultans debut – a high-scoring defeat against Karachi Kings – came alongside Andre Russell and Shahid Afridi. It was his first ever senior level T20 match.

^{Ilyas has impressed for Multan this season}

But it is not only about the opportunity handed to him – a relative unknown from the opposite end of the nation, but the effect his story has on the other children of Peshawar and of Pakistan. A PSL on home soil presents Ilyas as a tangible precedent of what is possible. Until his break, he was earning 10,000 Pakistani rupees per month through the sport – roughly equivalent to £50.

“The only thing that we used to have was a good shoe,” he reflects. “Maybe we’d get one good piece of clothing and we’d keep it. I used to get my rupees per month and I’d do everything within that. Now that I have the opportunity to spend more, it has had a huge effect on me.”

He points to the bowling tights he is wearing; he uses them when he trains – he spends hours taking catches up against the boundary rope, hopping either side of the line as if the world depended on it. The leggings are ordered in from Dubai. He does not overspend and has remained responsible, offering a chuckle as he looks back on the speed of a journey that began less than two years ago.

A first-class debut for Peshawar came out of the blue in October 2018 and brought ten wickets – five in each innings – and the rest, as they say, is history.

Six more followed in his next game, with another nine coming in his third professional red-ball match. There were four more in his fourth and four again in his fifth – a game that coincided with the draft that would change everything forever.

How did he find out about his PSL deal? Ilyas grins for a moment. “During the tea break, a friend saw the draft in a post on his mobile,” he says. “He was actually looking for himself.

“He came to me and told me that I had been selected in the Multan Sultans team. I didn’t believe him.”

The power of dreaming, as told by Mohammad Ilyas, a franchise fairytale and now a name forever etched in the folklore of Multan.