It is not rare for cricketers to have fallback options in case they do not make it to the top. Government jobs, civil services, banking, and public transport, physical education, coaching or even academics are some of the common avenues that sportspeople who fail to turn professional tend to explore.
But a fighter pilot aspirant turned cricketer? Without context, it sounds like a scriptwriters’ pitch meeting with producers for Top Gun meets Iqbal rather than anything remotely concerned with reality.
Then again, much like the outlier he is on the field of play, Sikandar Raza is an even bigger enigma off it and the sport of cricket is richer, and definitely more interesting with him in it.
Born in Sialkot, the ancient capital of a kingdom razed by Alexander the Great and the proud home to Pakistan’s first privately owned public airport, it comes as little surprise then that young Raza had his head towards the Sun and dreamt of an abode in the skies.
Unlike fads that tend to wear out as harsh realities seep into and break the bubble of childhood with the inadvertent march of time, Raza always held on to his dream and spent most of his formative years preparing towards that high-octane and crystal-clear goal – becoming a fighter pilot in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).
Life, as always, had ideas of its own and despite Raza’s best efforts and three-and-a-half-years of training in his early 20s, he failed a vision test and was rejected on the grounds of medical reasons for a problem that seven out of 10 people tend to have in normal life.
“In my childhood I had always dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot. I even appeared in the entrance exam of Pakistan Air Force in Lower Topa (Murree).
“About 10,000 candidates appeared in the test and only 60 got selected. I was one of 60 guys who passed the test. After three-and-a-half years, they deemed me unfit to fly the aircraft due to medical reasons,” he recounted the story with cricket.com.au over seven years ago.
And yet, here he is, leading the Zimbabwean renaissance almost single-handedly in the shortest format of the game in 2022 and lighting up the T20 World Cup.
To do what he did against the country of his birth in Perth requires innate ability and genius and over 10,000 hours of single-minded obsession.
He broke the proverbial back of the Pakistan middle-order with his bowling in the crucial middle overs and swung the momentum of the contest in Zimbabwe’s favour.
They eventually huffed and puffed their cheeks to secure a one-run victory in a typical David vs Goliath success story!
But the mastermind of the heist didn’t even have cricket in his sights, let alone playing it at the highest level and becoming an inspiring all-rounder.
Following his rejection from the Air Force, Raza claims he had the option of becoming an aeronautical engineer but he only wanted the ‘need for speed’ and ended up quitting the programme.
He then travelled across half the world to Scotland where he pursued his higher education and graduated as a software engineer from the Glasgow Caledonian University.
It was in Scotland in 2009 where Raza considered cricket as an option for the first time and started playing club cricket more and more frequently.
Raza then returned to Zimbabwe, where his family had already migrated to in 2002 and believing he was ‘in the right place at the right time,’ he began his forays into semi-professional cricket and continued to climb the rungs of the ladder.
And even then, he believed that was literally it. There were no plans of T20 World Cups and Player of the Match awards or international cricket.
Life, once again, had ideas of its own and this time for the better as Raza made his international debut for Zimbabwe in 2013. It seems quite apparent now why there’s a fire under his belly whenever he steps out on to the field.
"I picked up cricket late and maybe making up for lost time,” he had once said.
It is the same for the country he now represents and the nation he adopted. "For Zimbabweans, most of the learning is on the job. We don't get to play top nations a lot, we don't get to play under lights a lot."
True lovers of the sport and neutrals will always have a soft spot for Zimbabwe, the perennial underdogs who have spent the last two decades in the shadows of their glory days.
Gone are the days of the Flower brothers, Campbell, Streak, and Olonga as rampant corruption, a drought of talent, and the ever-isolationism of international cricket had threatened to push Zimbabwean cricket to the brink of oblivion.
Be that as it may, the African nation is now making waves at the biggest stage possible. The beast of Pakistan has been slain, and there’s still time for a fairytale story in the making with Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and India up next.
All eyes will be on their indomitable journeyman Sikandar Raza, who is the third-highest scorer in T20Is in 2022, having chalked up 661 runs at an average close to 35 and at a strike rate of over 151 at the time of writing.
He’s also picked up 23 wickets from 21 matches with an outrageous economy of 5.98 and has been one of the standout players of the year.
The Air Force training, after all, didn’t completely go in vain despite his shattered dreams. Misfortune may have prevented it from making him a fighter pilot but it did transform him into a fighter who takes pride in leaving blood, sweat, and tears on the field.
"Of course, it helps that I am from an Air Force background. We don't give up. I get hit, I get hurt, broken fingers, toes, etc. I don't care. I personally feel it helps spending the three-and-a-half years in PAF college. I will always be a fighter within myself. I couldn't become a fighter pilot. But I think as a person, I will always be a fighter. The training mentally and physically is paying dividends now."
That mentality peaked, not during the three wickets that he took in two overs to win the match for Zimbabwe against his country of origin nonetheless, but when confronted with the question, “At what point did you start believing that this match was going to play out in your favour?”
“Before the first ball was bowled.”
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