Bolton can still barely believe it. The exploits of 19-year-old Haseeb Hameed have united a community in admiration and astonishment.
This weekend, Hameed is playing his second Test match for England against India, in front of a packed, passionate crowd in Visakhapatnam. For many avidly following his progress in the former mill town where he grew up, his story is akin to a fairytale. “It was written in the stars,” Hameed’s elder brother Safwaan, himself an accomplished cricketer, told the Observer. “The pride that we and this community feel in him is so overwhelming. He has done it – for himself and for us.”
Maybe it was the nicknames Little Master and Baby Boycott – picked up while still a child with a plastic bat – or perhaps it was the crowds watching him play in the local park or the queues of children lining up to bowl at him. But Hameed seemed set for stardom when he was barely past his toddler years.
When he was just five, Hameed would pick up his bat and follow his brothers and father out to the park near their Greater Manchester home to practise. During the long summer nights after Hameed had finished school and returned from mosque classes, locals would gather to watch the family play. A queue would form – made up of children itching to bowl to the youngest and most talented Hameed. Even in the winter, the family would clear the snow so that they could have a game.
Fourteen years later, that dedication has paid off. Hameed now faces the best bowlers in the world. He made his England Test debut against India in Rajkot, only a few miles from his father’s ancestral village, making 31 and 82 on his maiden appearance and becoming only the second teenager to make his debut for England since 1949.
But what is remarkable about Hameed’s journey is his success in a historically elitist sport as a young British-Indian man hailing from one of the most deprived areas in UK. Those who know him say this background helped create the steeliness that has carried him to the highest levels of the game.
John Hutchinson, secretary of Bolton league club Farnworth Social Circle, where Hameed played and trained, said the teenager’s rapid progression had been staggering.
He said: “It was obvious right from the off that we had someone here who was exceptional. In the whole time that I had been coaching I had not seen anything like it.
“It was particularly outstanding because of his background. This was a young boy who came from one of the most deprived areas in Bolton, possibly in Lancashire, but rather than hinder him, this brought out in him a determination to succeed and a fearlessness which I had never seen before. He was infallible. I knew then that he would play for England.”
One man in particular has played a starring role in Hameed’s rise – his father Ismail. Born in the village of Umraj, in the state of Gujarat, Ismail emigrated to Bolton in 1969 with his wife Najma and worked in the town’s cotton factories. The couple had five children and lived in a two-up, two-down house in the deprived Halliwell area.
A few years later they were able to move to a larger house, but still in the same area, near Rawsthorne Park. It was to this park that Ismail would take his three sons almost every day to practise, hoping that one day they would succeed like his cricketing idol, Geoffrey Boycott.
The older sons Safwaan and Nuaman, now both in their 30s, went on to play professional cricket in lower league teams, but it was the youngest boy who caught the eye of talent scouts in the area.
Safwaan said: “Whenever we would go to practise, he would be there waiting by the door with his little plastic bat and ball, and he would pester my dad to give him throw-downs [balls thrown from a short distance]. We could see the park from our upstairs window and we’d always keep an eye on whether it was free and then we would all head down. People would gather around to watch when Haseeb was batting – there would be a queue of young lads wanting to bowl to him.”
Ismail had spotted the fascination with his youngest son’s batting ability and, a former league opening batsman himself, he decided to quit his job in the factory and became a driving instructor so that he could spend more time coaching Hameed.
At nine, Hameed was taken on by Lancashire and scored his first century only a year later, beating a record previously held by another famous Lancastrian cricketer: Andrew Flintoff.
Hutchinson remembers a studious and humble young man. On the pitch, he said, there was never any hint of arrogance but instead a supreme self-assurance. But even then the young right-handed batsman sometimes struggled with timekeeping. Last month, Hameed landed himself in trouble with the management on his first day of the tour, when he held up the squad’s departure for practice by being 10 minutes late for the England team bus after oversleeping. It would seem this is a family trait.
Neil Taylor, his former coach at Farnworth, said: “It was always just the two of them, father and son, and it was always last-minute as Ismail would always be working. The match would start at 6pm and Haseeb would arrive at 5.55pm. He would get out of the car in all his gear and go straight out on to the field. He was exceptional. It was all cricket, cricket, cricket and he would spend hours practising. His teammates were usually not up to his standard but Haseeb was never aloof, always the humble one, and everybody wanted a piece of him.”
Shortly after he made his first century for Lancashire Under-11s against Kent, he was approached by Worcestershire, who were ready to invest £100,000 in his education by sending him to the private Malvern college, where he would have been a boarder.
But the bidding war was won by Lancashire, who responded by creating a cricket scholarship for the year 8 student. Hameed left his local state comprehensive to go to Bolton school, catapulting him from the inner city into the life of a public schoolboy.
But Hutchinson said Hameed’s feet remained firmly on the ground. “It did not change him one bit and he continued practising with his dad and friends. The education helps but it was not the reason for his success – that is all down to his personality and the fact that he strives to succeed because of where he comes from.”
Hameed is just the latest in a long line of sporting stars from Bolton, perhaps the most celebrated of whom in recent years has been Amir Khan, the former world light welterweight champion boxer now approaching the end of an illustrious career. Hameed looks to have all his greatest years ahead of him.
