Sohaib Khan’s press conference after UAE’s victory over Canada in the T20 World Cup
There was silence in the UAE’s innings as the score reached 66/4 chasing 151.Harshit Kaushik just returned and what looked like a comfortable chase began to falter.Aryansh Sharma, 44, stood like a beacon at one end. But he needed a partner. Someone who has the guts to go into a crashing chase and absorb the pressure.Enter Sohaib Khan. After showing poise in the beginning, he started to show his true colors.He smashed 17 runs in the 17th over against Dilon Heyliger and added 13 more against Jaskaran Singh in the next.When Sohaib finally fell after amassing 51 off 29 balls, thanks to four 4s and four 6s, the scores were level. His departure felt like a footnote to me. The job was done.“Ahead of me and Aryansh, I will give a lot of credit to our coach, Lalchand Rajput and the entire management. When I was getting ready to bat, they only said one thing: ‘Just believe in yourself, this is the time and you can do it’,” Sohaib told reporters at the post-match press conference.On Friday night, the strategy was simple as he added: “We only required 12 runs per over. As MS Dhoni would say, when you’re on the field in a pressure game, just support the technique and keep calm, so I thought the same.”
UAE’s Sohaib Khan hits the boundary (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Sohaib was born in Bihar and spent a substantial part of his early life in Gaya. He would play tennis cricket there. It was long before he encountered professional structures.“I was born in Bihar and spent a lot of time in Gaya district of Bihar,” said the 27-year-old batsman. “I started playing professional cricket very late in 2014. But before that this situation happened in tennis cricket when we played red tennis there.The “situation” he refers to, the pressure chase, was his cricket classroom. While Bihar planted the seed of its desire for cricket, New Delhi helped it grow.“I started my cricket journey from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and as I said this was my home where I started professionally,” added Sohaib.After completing his BA in Sociology at Jamia, he played there for three to four years from 2014 to 2019 and participated in the North Zone tournaments in 2017 and 2018.
Sohaib Khan of the United Arab Emirates (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Then life intervened and opportunities dried up. COVID has hit. And then he got married in 2021.“Honestly, this is out of the question,” he continued. “I moved to UAE during COVID in November 2021 because we couldn’t get opportunities here. I got married in 2021.”Life was tiring but not without cricket. During the day, he worked as a financial advisor and salesman. At night he honed his cricket skills under the floodlights.“There is such cricket infrastructure in the UAE that we can play cricket at night and do our work in the morning. So it has helped a lot,” he added.“My daughter was there and my wife was there, my parents were there (today) in the stadium, so I thought this is the game where I can do my best. No matter how much I’ve struggled in the last 4-5 years, if this stage comes, it’s OK, what else can I ask from God?” he smiled.READ ALSO: T20 World Cup: Five-star Junaid Siddique, Aryansh Sharma fire UAE firstFriday’s innings will leave a mark in the memories of cricket fanatics that the boy from Gaya can become a UAE hero. A financial advisor can become the winner of the World Cup match. A late bloomer can bloom on the biggest stage.