How Fawad Ahmed’s Australian Test dream blew up in his face
What should have been the happiest cricketing moment of Fawad Ahmed’s life quickly turned into a nightmare on English soil. He opens up to DANIEL CHERNY for our No Test Wonders series.
David Warner tried to console Fawad Ahmed, but the leg-spinner knew his best chance had come and gone.
Ahmed’s story was already something out of a movie script – a Pakistani asylum seeker who had played white-ball internationals for his adopted nation, making international headlines for refusing to wear the logo of a beer sponsor on his playing shirt because of his Muslim faith.
It was the baggy green that Ahmed most craved, however.
Had his Australian citizenship come even a few weeks earlier in 2013 he might well have played in that year’s Ashes series, having surged into contention with 16 wickets in three Sheffield Shield matches for Victoria in the back half of the previous summer.
But with Nathan Lyon having entrenched his position as Australia’s first-choice spinner, Ahmed knew he was only likely to get a go if the Aussies picked two tweakers.
Steve O’Keefe had got the nod in the UAE the previous year, but Ahmed was preferred as Lyon’s understudy for the combined tours of the West Indies and England in mid-2015.
Australian coach Darren Lehmann had even gone to the trouble of inviting Ahmed to join the side in its celebrations after the World Cup final win in late March to make him feel comfortable around the players who would soon be his teammates.
At a pre-tour training camp, Ahmed remembers being told by a mightily impressed wicketkeeper Brad Haddin that: “Man, if you’re bowling like this, we’re not losing the Ashes.”
But England is not generally the domain of twin spinners. Indeed four years later Australia didn’t even pick a second specialist tweaker behind Lyon. Realistically his opening was going to come in the first of seven Tests for the jump tour at the relative spin haven of Dominica. Bowl well enough there and that would give selectors something to think about.
Ahmed took 2-144 in the tour match ahead of the first Test, but he was still hopeful of getting the nod given the reputation of Windsor Park.
However a hand on the shoulder from selector-on-duty Mark Waugh at training on match eve brought unwanted news.
“He said, ‘Look, you’re not playing,’” Ahmed said.
“We’re going with three fast bowlers and that’s it. He said, ‘It’s not about your skill’.”
Suddenly the opportunity of a lifetime had been replaced by the likelihood of three very long months running drinks.
“I was next to David Warner. I’m pretty strong and it was emotional,” Ahmed said.
“Warner said, ‘Don’t get disheartened’.
“I said, ‘I know I’m not going to be playing’.
“He said, ‘Don’t say that’.
“(But) I was right at that time. I said, ‘Look, if you’re playing three fast bowlers and one spinner at Dominica, you’re not playing that on England soil’. It’s not happening.”
Australia’s quicks ran through the Windies on day one and Ahmed never really came close to a look-in from there.
His biggest involvement in the Ashes came when he given the duty of running drinks to Australia’s rotating cast of batsmen as Stuart Broad ran amok on the first morning of the fourth Test at Nottingham, where Australia ceded the urn after being bowled out for 60.
“I didn’t bowl well in a couple of practice games in England, because I was completely off. Mentally I was off,” Ahmed said.
“People don’t understand mental stress, but it can come in a different way. I was missing home. I lived alone. There was a small apartment there on this street (in Newport), just two minutes walk from here. But I still missed Melbourne, my friends, my teammates here in Victoria, club cricket.” Ahmed said.
“I didn’t enjoy that tour, in a sense, it was tough. I think we played really well. We lost 3-2 (but the) Nottingham Test was an absolute shambles.”
That tour marked the end in Test cricket for Haddin, Ryan Harris, Shane Watson, Chris Rogers and Michael Clarke. Mitchell Johnson followed soon, too.
Ahmed remember Clarke telling teammates of his decision before the fifth and final Test at The Oval.
“I was surprised. I never thought he’s gonna retire right now, because he was going to captain (the Melbourne) Stars,” Ahmed said, speaking fondly of Clarke who took him out for a one-on-one dinner in England as a ritual to welcome him to the fold.
But while he remained a dangerous player on the short-form circuit and still played in the Big Bash League as recently as last year, Ahmed never again made a Test squad, or even appear again in limited-overs cricket for Australia.
O’Keefe, Ashton Agar, Mitchell Swepson and Jon Holland were all preferred at various points by the time Ahmed lost his Cricket Victoria contract in 2018.
He ended his Shield career with 156 wickets at 29.8, a superior average to nearly all his spinning contemporaries. He wonders what would have happened had he been given a chance on one of the tours of Asia, pondering the fine line between playing 50 Tests or none at all.
“I don’t have answers,” Ahmed said. “Some people say this and that. At the end, the age was a big factor as well.”
Ah yes, the elephant in the room, Ahmed’s age, something that has been a source of conjecture when he first burst into prominence more than a decade ago. While some official paperwork claims he was born as early as 1979, he insists his actual birthdate of February 5, 1982, is accurate.
* This is the second interview Code Sports is running in a series on No Test Wonders.
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