Saqlain's magical fingers

“Aisa lag rahan hain, ki hum jannat mein practise kar rahen hain (It feels like we are practicing in heaven),” Aaqib Javed said to Umar Gul, Mohammad Aamer and Danish Kaneria. A burst of laughter followed as the four looked at the four bearded men, dressed in jabbas (ankle-length tunics) standing at one end of the nets on the practice grounds in Leicester.

One of them, a familiar face, had just given a half-hour long practical lesson to Saeed Ajmal on the art of offspin. Saqlain Mushtaq may have been forgotten after Virender Sehwag’s Multan assault in 2004, but the pioneer of the doosra still can teach his apprentices a lesson or two.

Saqlain, who lives in Leicestershire, dropped in to visit the Pakistan team and offered Friday prayers with some of the players. Though he had grown a slight paunch (“I’m eating home-cooked food three times a day,” he chuckled) he still seemed in peak fitness. He's active in the local cricket league, where he makes inexperienced batsmen dance to his lethal doosra. Ajmal, who can bowl the other ‘un confidently, was keen on learning the secrets of the flight and accuracy that Saqlain was famous for in his peak.

Saqlain was in his element. Folding up the sleeves of the tunic, he rubbed his hands on the dry turf before approaching the crease in minimalist fashion and letting fly.

“Oooh, what flight,” gushed Ajmal at the other end before settling down to listen obediently to the master, with folded hands, as if standing in prayer.

It was the simplicity that caught the eye each time the ball floated out of Saqlain's fingers and pitched where he wanted it to. For today’s youngsters it might be all about Muttiah Muralitharan and his doosras, but if you were a cricket fan in the 1990s there was a line that was a mantra for numerous kids playing cricket in the streets of Pakistan and India: “Well bowled, Saqi,” Moin Khan would groan from behind the stumps each time the offspinner beat the bat. The sight of him taking two steps before flicking the ball which looped nicely towards the batsman before drifting away from the bat would make jaws drop.

More than a decade later, those fingers can still create magic. It doesn’t matter if he is wearing cricketing whites or prayer clothes.