EXCLUSIVE
Follow UsAcross 35 posts on his Instagram, you get quite a good sense of the 21-year-old Pakistani opener Saim Ayub.
In his own words, he is “Calm, passionate, a vivid learner and his own idol”. What’s fascinating are some of the other quotes, “Be the reason for the crowd, Learning never ends, Live the Presence and Be Calm”.
Ayub is a Generation Z cricketer, but he leaves no stone unturned with how he goes about his things, like the legends of the sport. In a country where there is always an influx of pace bowlers, Generation Z has seen many batters come up the ranks.
There is Abdullah Shafique, Azam Khan, Mohammad Haris, and Mirza Baig, but the one breaking the run charts now is Ayub himself. The 21-year-old’s game is made for the reels, be it his nonchalant drives or fearsome cuts, his no-look scoop behind the wicketkeeper, or his tantalising no-look slogs that easily clear the boundary.
It couldn’t have been cut more organically for the highlight reels, which caught the attention of several Caribbean Premier League (CPL) franchises, including the Guyana Amazon Warriors, who were beneficiaries of his talent, with Ayub finishing as the second-highest run-scorer in the 2023 edition of the competition and helping them break the title drought.
“When we picked him in the Guyana Amazon Warriors, I knew of his talent, having seen him earlier at the Pakistan Super League (PSL),” notable analyst Prasanna Lara, who worked pretty closely with Ayub during his stint at the CPL, told Cricket.com in an exclusive chat.
“He (Ayub) has it all to make it big - be it technique, maturity level, time and shots that he has with elegance. I pushed him to make it to the Warriors, where he scored crucial runs for us and guided us to a (CPL) title last year,” Prasanna had to add.
But in his first three games at the CPL, all Ayub could manage was 24*, 31 and 7, which really hurt his confidence. Prasanna recalls how he chatted with the youngster after these three scores.
“I only told him one thing, Saim, look: you are not someone who will hit sixes from ball one, that’s what you are trying to do to prove a point. Your game is all about taking time, and you are not a power-hitter, you have a graceful game, so you need some balls to adjust to the conditions.
If you bat well for the first 15 balls, you will end up with a strike-rate of 130 after 50 balls. From the next day, he used to practice the same way. He used to play to the merit of the ball for the first 15 balls, and then he used to attack.”
Ayub’s fortunes turned around, with scores of 62, 58 and 85 in the aftermath of the advice, where he struck at 144.19, 165.71 and 160.38, taking his team over the line in all three games. The Karachi batter, who tottered at 20th in the run-chart list, scored 416 runs in the next ten innings, only behind Shai Hope by three runs.
It wasn’t only his T20 form that saw a noticeable improvement; the 21-year-old also made huge strides in the red-ball format. While he had already shown his talent in the 2022 season, where he scored 516 runs in 18 innings, his showing in 2023 elevated the left-hander’s stocks to an all-time high.
At the 2023 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, Ayub scored 553 runs in eight innings with a mighty average of 79, where he also had scores of 142*, 40, 4, 20, 35, 0, 203 and 109. It was his last two performances that had a profound effect on the national selectors - with the 203 and 109 coming in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy final against the Faisalabad Region, whose bowling attack had familiar figures in the form of leading wicket-taker Khurram Shahzad, Faheem Ashraf and Arshad Iqbal. A national call-up for the 21-year-old seemed imminent.
“The moment he reached Australia, he first texted me ‘Bhai, what should I do to be successful here, you have been successful with the South African team which has never lost in Australia, and batters have scored runs left, right and centre,” Prasanna recalled his conversation with Ayub.
‘What do you use to advise your batters, and what are the areas where the current Australian bowling unit will be looking to get me out? I asked him one question, “Are you playing,” and he told me ‘I don’t know, I might play, or I might not even play a single Test in the series. But I want to be prepared for the situation in case a chance comes my way. I want to make it count’
Even when there was no indication of Ayub getting a nod ahead of the established Imam-ul-Haq and Shafique at the top of the order, there was never a dip in his intensity during preparation, which went at full tilt.
“He didn’t play the first one, he didn’t play the second Test, but every day he goes to the nets as if he is playing the next day. He always used to keep saying, ‘I don’t want to be someone who wants to put his preparation to the last day before playing. I don’t want to leave any stone unturned’,” Prasanna recalled.
The moment has finally come for Ayub, a rare opportunity to spend time under the sun in Australian conditions, with Pakistan naming him in the XI for the Sydney Test, which starts on Wednesday (January 3). Prasanna only hoped that the craze would grow multi-fold and the bandwagon would be overloaded for the player.
“I’m sure that he (Ayub) will perform. He doesn’t have any nerve and is quite a self-confident man. He always tells me that he wants to stick to the blueprint, I have told him what his blueprint will be for the different formats. He is a meticulous learner, and I wish him all the best and hope he succeeds there,” he added.
“Getting a hundred on Test debut against Australia will be a perfect start, and every cricketer will be dreaming about that, and I hope that he gets one.”
