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QUETTA/KARACHI: A young Pakistani cricketer, who belongs to Quetta’s impoverished Sariab neighborhood, has emerged as an icon for sports enthusiasts in the southwestern Balochistan province and hopes to turn the fortunes of his team in an ongoing Twenty20 tournament in the country.
Abdul Wahid Bangalzai, 20, was handpicked by Quetta Gladiators once again to play the Pakistan Super League (PSL) championship this year and has featured in four matches against Peshawar Zalmi, Multan Sultan, Karachi Kings and Lahore Qalandar as a top order batter.
The Gladiators have only secured victory in one match against the Kings in the ongoing PSL season, though Bangalzai hoped they would make a comeback and get into the playoffs.
“We have a very balanced team and we will come back in the game with a good performance,” he told Arab News during an interview earlier this week. “I have been preparing myself by doing a lot of hard work and I will do my best in the upcoming matches.”
Cricket has largely stayed away from Quetta due to separatist and militant violence in Balochistan. The last international cricket contest held in the city was 26 years ago when Pakistan beat Zimbabwe by three wickets in October 1996.
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) organized a PSL exhibition match between Peshawar Zalmi and Quetta Gladiators at the Akbar Bugti Stadium earlier this month before the official launch of this year’s tournament. However, no other PSL match is scheduled to be held in the southwest region in the ongoing season.
Bangalzai, nevertheless, maintained the T20 championship was providing a major opportunity to young players to learn from the best in the world, adding the future of cricket was bright for the emerging talent in Balochistan.
“Whoever is from Quetta or any other Pakistani city should remember that hard work and good performance will always get the desired results,” he said.
The 20-year-old right-handed Gladiator batter began his own career with Pakistan’s famous tape-ball street cricket at the age of 10, though he later asked his elder brother to get him enrolled in the city’s only cricket academy at the Akbar Bugti Stadium where he started practicing with hard ball.
He scored 63 runs in his first-class debut back in 2021 before becoming a social media sensation among sports fan in his province for hitting a double century in domestic cricket in the same year.
“Abdul Wahid Bangalzai is an inspiration for young cricketers in Balochistan and I hope he will be included in Pakistan’s national squad,” the provincial sports secretary, Ishaq Jamali, told Arab News. “If he gets selected timely and performs well in the Pakistan team, it will motivate young cricket talent in Quetta and other districts of Balochistan.”
Jamali informed his department was negotiating with the PCB to host 40 hours of first-class cricket in Balochistan to further promote the sport.
Bangalzai, meanwhile, said it was his desire to see more PSL matches in Quetta.
“The ground was packed with thousands of cricket fans during the exhibition match in the city,” he recalled. “People had come to see their favorite players.”
His father, Bahram Khan, who worked as a driver with a provincial department said that he wanted his son to play in the national team and make the country and people of Balochistan proud with his performance.
“He is not batting well in PSL 8,” he told Arab News. “But I am still praying for my son and we are confident he will emerge as a star in the Pakistan Super League.”