The 20-year-old Indian left-arm pacer Khaleel Ahmed, who recently made his international cricket debut during the Asia Cup 2018 in UAE, reveals how the wicketkeeper and the former Indian skipper MS Dhoni helped him to claim his maiden international wicket.
During India’s opening match in the Asia Cup 2018 against Hong Kong, Khaleel made his debut in the international cricket. In that game, the young left-arm pacer ended with the bowling figure of 10-0-48-3, where India won that game closely by 26 runs.
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Chasing down the 286 runs target set by the Indian cricket team, Hong Kong openers Nizakat Khan and the skipper Anshuman Rath provided a brilliant start of the 174-run opening partnership. In that crucial period, while the Indian left-arm chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav dismissed the skipper Rath (73) to break that partnership in the 35th over, Khaleel dismissed Nizakat (92) in the very next over and opened his wicket account in the international cricket. Khaleel trapped Nizakat for lbw to earn his maiden international wicket but he credited Dhoni to achieve that.
Recently, Khaleel told Times of India, “A 150-run opening stand was something we didn’t expect. They were hammering me. I had tried almost everything but nothing was working out.
“Dhoni bhai walked up to me and said ‘ pace maintain kar ke rakh aur thoda aage daal’ (maintain your pace and bowl a bit forward). I tried it twice and it worked for me. Finally, I managed to break the opening stand. We all are lucky to have Dhoni in the team.”
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Khaleel took two more wickets in that game while the next batting collapsed untimely denied a stunning victory for Hong Kong.
Khaleel played one more match in that tournament and that was against Afghanistan in the Super Four stage which was ended in a historic tie. In that game, Khaleel dismissed the set opponent batsman Mohammad Nabi for 64 runs and ended with the bowling figure of 10-1-45-1.
The young left-arm pacer is now hoping to get another chance in the upcoming home limited-overs series against Windies.
