Ryan Burl liked playing squash when he was at the Peterhouse Boys School but the love of cricket and, specifically, the team game's camaraderie, drew him in, and made him want to be an international cricketer. A left-hand middle-order batsman and occasional legspinner, Burl broke into the Zimbabwe side in 2017, and has already played in the BPL and Afghanistan's Shpageeza Cricket League. Born and brought up in Marondera, 72km east of Harare, the sports-mad Burl was further engaged in Peterhouse Boys which has produced England internationals Gary Balance, Tom Curran and Sam Curran, Italian rugby star Sebastian Negri and Olympic rower Peter Purcell-Gilpin. Burl made his Zimbabwe Under-17 and Under-19 debut within a month of each other in the 2010-11 season, before making his first-class debut in 2014. A century and two fifties against Afghanistan A in January 2017 paved the way for his ODI debut in the following month against Afghanistan. By the end of that year, he would also make his Test debut against South Africa. He did well during the first half of Zimbabwe's 2019-20 tour of Bangladesh and Singapore, earning a gig with the BPL side Chattogram Challengers where he would be best remembered for taking arguably the catch of the tournament that season. Mohammad Isam
October 2020