Muhammad Waseem, the swashbuckling captain of hosts UAE that starts its Asia Cup campaign against India Wednesday, is the country’s first superstar. Tall and muscular, with a thick black beard, the 31-year-old draws huge crowds around these parts. Waseem, the second on the list of T20 internationals six-hitters, couldn’t imagine this popularity in an alien land miles away from his village — Mian Channu in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Waseem’s first trip to UAE was on the invitation of a friend to play in a tournament during the Ramadan, but his larger ambition was to find a job and support his family. He found neither cricketing success nor a job until he stumbled into Mudassir Ali, an entrepreneur, cricket team owner and a commentator with roots in India. Mudassir had shifted from Hyderabad in the late aughts to start his company, but he did not leave his love for cricket and biryani aside. With a few friends, he started a cricket club that offered the platform for young cricketers.
“Thrice he came on a visit visa and played in the local leagues. But he could not gain much attention. Then, a friend of mine informed me about him, and I went to have a look at a game in Ajman. He impressed me straightway, not with the way he batted, but his pick-up and throw from the deep. I took him to my club, Chargers,” Mudassir remembers.
He also offered him a job as a sales executive in his firm, Versatile Deployment Solutions. But two months into his shifts, Mudassir told him to stop coming to the office. “I wanted him to focus full-time on cricket, because that was his future. He was so good that I wanted him to spend all his energy on cricket,” he says.
The early days on the ground too were tough, sixes did not roll off his blade immediately. “He had not played much with the hard ball, and on the concrete pitches here, where the ball came on much quicker. He also had a tendency to swipe across the line, as players are prone to in tape-ball cricket. But he was a quick learner, extremely hardworking and humble to the core,” he says.
Brotherhood develops
Over the years, their bond blossomed into brotherhood. He provided him with not only exposure, job and guidance, but equipment and during the pandemic accommodation as well. The Chargers were wound up in 2019, but he helped him find another club.
However, his six-hitting prowess went unnoticed until the 2020 edition of the D-10, a ten-over-a-side tournament organised by the Emirates Cricket Board. “He not only scored a lot of runs but carried a young team, mostly Under-19 players, to the final. People started to sit up and take notice.”
A year later, his seize-the-day moment arrived.
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Turning up for Northern Warriors in the Abu Dhabi T10, his bat rained sixes. He thrashed a 34-ball 76 against Abu Dhabi, which had Chris Gayle and Ben Duckett on its rolls. Then he thundered a 13-ball 56 against Pune Devils, matching the fastest half-century of the tournament that Gayle had set only hours ago. He architected his team’s title march with 212 runs from nine matches at a head-spinning strike rate of 225.53. “Robin Singh was the team’s coach and he played a huge role in shaping his career,” Mudassir said.
UAE cricket team captain Muhammad Waseem at the Asia Cup press conference. (PHOTO: UAE Cricket X)
The same year, he fulfilled the eligibility criteria — three years of residing in UAE — to represent the country and later in 2021, he made his debut.
From there his career took off, and he has featured in most of the country’s favourite moments. He compiled 50 runs and defended 13 runs in the last over to script a famous win over Namibia in the qualifying stages of the 2022 edition of the T20 World Cup. UAE did not qualify for the main draw, but the victory, against a side that comprised discards from South Africa, instilled them with belief that they could make more ripples in the games.
Since then, they have beaten Afghanistan and Bangladesh multiple times, New Zealand (Waseem rattled off 55 off 29 balls against an attack that featured Tim Southee, Kyle Jamieson and Mitchell Santner) and Scotland. In a matter of time, he was picked in the ILT20, where impressed by his clean-hitting one of the members in the team management group told him that they would have brought him into the IPL but for his nationality (players from Pakistan are prohibited from the league).
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As his career graph keeps soaring, Mudassir feels a sense of gratification that he shaped the career of UAE’s biggest cricketer of his time. But the more satisfying moment was when Waseem’s mother thanked him for her son’s growth. “It was a moment that touched me. His mother, in an interview, thanked me for my efforts to shape his career. It was worth all the sacrifices,” he says. A giant-scalp or two in the Asia Cup could make the trophy shine brighter in the eyes of Waseem.
