The 17-year-old legspinner is one of the players to watch out for as England try to match their title-winning feat from the 1998 Under-19 World Cup
Andrew Miller04-Feb-2022The kids are all right, you know.Amid the existential gloom of England’s Ashes misadventure, and the potshots at a county system that no longer seems capable of coaching a functioning technique into a generation of Test wannabes, there is an alternative narrative taking shape in Antigua this week.One in which a batch of fearless teenagers, raised on the derring-do of the greatest white-ball team in England’s history, and decked out in the same sky-blue shirts in which their heroes won the most thrilling World Cup final of all time, have surged into their own global final with a series of captivating performances.On Saturday, England’s Young Lions take on India in the country’s first appearance in the Under-19 World Cup final since their victory over New Zealand in 1998. And win or lose, if this latest contest comes close to living up to the epic semi-final against Afghanistan on Tuesday, it is safe to assume that more than a few of the combatants will be ready to follow in the footsteps of Graeme Swann, Owais Shah and Rob Key, the three most notable members of that trophy-lifting team from the previous millennium.One or two, however, would already appear to be on the fast track, not least the precocious Leicestershire legspinner Rehan Ahmed, who can loosely claim to have taken his first Test wicket at the age of 11, and whose extraordinary three-wicket over against Afghanistan – in the crunchiest match situation that he can yet have encountered in his young career – became the moment that his team-mates could finally dare to believe.Rehan Ahmed’s three wickets at the death turned the semi-final against Afghanistan around in England’s favour•ICC/Getty Images”Those are the games you live for,” Rehan tells ESPNcricinfo. “I’d much rather have a game like that and win, than an easy win. It was fun to be part of it.”England’s 15-run winning margin does little justice to the raw jeopardy of the contest’s closing overs – pound for pound, it was arguably the most compelling 50-over contest since World Cup final. With four overs remaining, England seemed finally to have settled it with room to spare. Afghanistan needed 43 more runs with four wickets standing, and Rehan for once looked to have played a bit-part role, after an uncharacteristically loose first spell and a solitary wicket in his second.But then, all hell broke loose, and all bets were off. The first ball of James Sales’ next over was skied to point for what seemed like the match-settling wicket, only for the batter to be reprieved by a front-foot no-ball. The resulting free hit skidded away for five no-balls as well, and when a nervous Sales was cracked over long-on for six, 20 runs had been skelped from the over to transform the match situation.Related
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What happened next was a credit to the players’ composure and burgeoning professionalism – but also, you sense, to the never-say-die attributes of the senior team on whom they have modelled their approach to the game. The notion, for instance, of an England captain tossing the ball to his legspinner with 19 runs needed from 12 balls might never have crossed the mind of a previous generation. But that is what Eoin Morgan memorably did in an ODI in Grenada in 2019, when Adil Rashid responded to his captain’s faith with four wickets in five balls, and as Tom Prest had hinted in the build-up to the Under-19 final, this was a tactic he had no qualms about emulating.”At the start, I didn’t bowl as well as I wanted to, but I knew I had an over in there somewhere,” Rehan recalls. “We have so many bowling options but I told Presty, ‘look, I want to bowl at the death; even if they need three runs in the last over, give it to me and I’ll still bowl it’. I told him I’m ready whenever he needs me.”
“I know I’ve got some kind of natural cricket skills, but if I don’t work as hard as I should, then there’s no point in being talented. Even if I’m not the most talented, if I work the hardest, I’ll still be in a good position”
His first ball alone justified the faith. The dangerous Noor Ahmad failed to connect properly with a high-bouncing googly, and James Rew sprinted in from long-on to hold on to a magnificent catch. Three balls later, Izharulhaq Naveed also went for broke, and Sales on the midwicket boundary atoned for his jitters with another hugely composed take. One ball later, it was all but over – another wicket-taking googly, Rehan’s fourth of the innings – ripped into middle stump to dispatch Bilal Sami for a duck. Though Josh Boyden still had to close the match out, Rehan’s three wickets for a single run had put the game way before Afghanistan’s last pair.”If I was to bowl a ball that could save my life, I would just bowl my googly,” he says. “I just love bowling it. I’m trying to bowl it quicker, so that even if they do pick it, they have less time to react to it. It’s a wicket-taking ball. In practice, I’ll focus my legspin against the batters, and then afterwards I just bowl four overs of googlies, top of middle, top of off… I’m very confident in my googly.”
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He is very confident in general – infectiously so – and with ample justification too, given the strides he is already making. But even at the age of 17, Rehan’s game is underpinned by a work ethic that players a decade older would kill to have recognised at such a tender age.”I know I’ve got some kind of natural cricket skills, but if I don’t work as hard as I should, then there’s no point in being talented,” he says. “Even if I’m not the most talented, if I work the hardest, I’ll still be in a good position.”To say he has been on England’s radar for a while would be understating it. In July 2016, Rehan hadn’t even celebrated his 12th birthday when he was spirited down to Lord’s by the MCC head coach Steve Kirby, whose job it was to round up net bowlers to assist preparations ahead of England’s Test series against Pakistan.Rehan Ahmed, just 13 then, in action against Test-class batters at Lord’s•Getty ImagesFinding himself short of adequate legspinners to replicate the methods of Pakistan’s star bowler Yasir Shah, Kirby put out feelers with his scouts on the league scene, including with Gemaal Hussain, his former Gloucestershire team-mate, and one of Rehan’s team-mates at his club in Nottinghamshire, Thoresby Colliery CC.”Gemaal was like, ‘are you ready’?” Rehan recalls. “And I was like, ‘I’m always ready’!”I wasn’t initially meant to bowl to the England boys [but only to the Pakistan players], but I bowled a couple of legspinners to Kirby, then I bowled the googly. He didn’t pick it. And he was like, ‘you can come bowl to the senior guys’.”As much as I tried to stay calm and bowl to them like normal people, I just couldn’t, because I was bowling to Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook and people with Ashes hundreds, and bowling in the same nets as people with five-fors and Test-match wickets. It was crazy.”But you nicked them off, didn’t you?Rehan grins: “Well, yeah, that did happen… yeah.””I bowled Ben Stokes a couple of legspinners and a googly and he snicked off; he wasn’t the happiest so I didn’t celebrate… I just took the ball and walked back to my mark. But when I snicked off Alastair Cook, that was a bit more like it. He wasn’t as bothered. But I didn’t celebrate because he’s probably the best player in Test cricket. So I was just lucky to do that.”The impact that Rehan made was so telling that MCC politely declined any media coverage, rightly suggesting that too much attention at such a young age would be detrimental. But when Rehan was brought back to Lord’s in 2017 for the visit of West Indies, he sensed a new-found respect from the players in his sights.”When I bowled to Pakistan, they didn’t take me seriously and I got a few more wickets against them,” he says. “But West Indies played me like an actual bowler, which was a big difference, and I learnt so much more. They just showed a different standard. When I bowled to Jason Holder, it was just a different class. He was the No. 1 Test allrounder at the time, and it was just crazy.”
“I never had much coaching when I was younger. It was mainly YouTube and a few tips from my dad. But you can take everything as a learning, whether it’s watching someone bowl badly or watching someone bowl well”
Word was spreading beyond the confines of the nets too. “Steve Kirby just dropped it on me during one of the sessions, saying I’m gonna meet Shane Warne,” Rehan recalls. “I thought I was just going to sit down with him and have a chat – that was already amazing – but when he said ‘come on, let’s go have a bowl’, I couldn’t feel my toes!”It is shocking to think that Rehan hadn’t yet turned three when Warne played his last Test in January 2007. But thanks to YouTube, his legend lives on, and in fact, it was Rehan’s hours spent studying Warne’s variations that helped to inspire a diminutive young seamer to first give it a rip.”I never had much coaching when I was younger,” he says. “It was mainly YouTube and a few tips from my dad. But you can take everything as a learning, whether it’s watching someone bowl badly or watching someone bowl well. Even the other day [against Afghanistan], I took my first spell as another learning curve. You never look down on yourself after a couple of bad balls or a bad spell. It’s always about having belief till the end.”But as his game continues to progress, the coaching support around Rehan becomes increasingly valuable. He speaks particularly highly of Richard Dawson, the Young Lions head coach whose name has entered the frame for the interim Test role, and whose methods are sufficiently hands-off to allow him to develop at his own pace.”He’s been a massive help,” Rehan says. “He’s not a big technical coach; he’s more of a feel coach, which I don’t mind. I much prefer it when people tell me how to do stuff, rather than telling me what to do and what not to do… like front leg, front arm, this and that. With Daws, he says if the outcome’s good, you don’t need to worry about anything else. Focus on the outcome – if you’re landing in a good area, your action must be good enough.”Sometimes I’ll force myself to bowl full tosses, just to see if I have control of the ball,” he adds. “In nets, I’ll see if I can hit the top of middle on the full, or bowl a half-tracker. Because if someone’s going well, you want to get them off strike, if he’s whacking the good balls, you need to learn how to give them one, so it’s not just about bowling in one area for every batter.”
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It has been a remarkable journey for Rehan already, and he doesn’t even turn 18 until August. But if the World Cup final marks his first major foray into the limelight, then the events of the past 12 months – including his first season of List A cricket for Leicestershire, and even a call-up to the squad for India’s tour match at Durham last summer – have all added to the sense that he is ready for whatever is coming next.Rehan Ahmed has four-fors in each of his three outings at the Under-19 World Cup so far•ICC via Getty”Joining Leicestershire was probably one of the best decisions that I could have made at the time,” he says, having initially been part of Nottinghamshire’s youth system. “Notts is a massive county – and obviously you never close doors – but I felt at Leicestershire there were more coaches available at more times. When you see Paul Nixon coaching the Under-10s, you’re like, yeah, this is the county for me.”Though he didn’t play in the County Select XI fixture against India, he did more than just gawp at the superstars in his midst. “Just being around the whole Indian team, you see [Virat] Kohli walking up there and Rishabh Pant hitting it, and Rohit Sharma playing – it was just crazy. But then I came on a substitute and I took a catch of [Cheteshwar] Pujara. He just guided it to me at leg slip, and I took the catch, and he’s walking off giving me a death stare, and I’m just smiling because I’ve caught Pujara out.”And it will be India in his sights once more on Saturday, albeit a generation of players that he may yet get a chance to mix with on a more regular basis as their careers progress.”They’re a very good batting side,” he says, after watching Yash Dhull’s century, and 94 from Shaik Rasheed put their semi-final against Australia out of reach. “If they bat first and we try and restrict them to a low score, it could happen… but it doesn’t really matter. They have bowled teams out for 50 before, so they have a decent attack as well.”Either way, Rehan is convinced that the events of England’s semi-final, and the fact that they were forced to dig so deep – first with the bat, as George Bell and Alex Horton transformed their target with an unbeaten 95-run stand, and then with the ball – can only serve as a huge confidence boost to the whole squad.”Belly is one of the best players I’ve seen in pressure situations,” Rehan says. “Even though he’s quite a nervous guy, he always finds a way. When I was batting with Belly, I was like, ‘he’s going to do it again’. If Belly’s there, you never lose hope.”That last game, Horts came out and he still smashed a fifty from No. 8. It just shows that we’ve got batting to the bottom. [Jacob] Bethell is in unbelievable form, Prest is in unbelievable form, [Will] Luxton is batting so well. [James] Rew is doing his own thing. Everyone’s contributing.”It’s just about doing our own skills the best we can, because it’s the biggest game of all our lives right now.”