For cricket fans in Pakistan’s northern Hunza Valley, the T20 World Cup will start two days before Babar Azam and company kick off their campaign. Television sets in towns situated beneath the Rakaposhi peak will most likely be switched on in the wee hours of June 4, the day Uganda take on Afghanistan in their opener in Guyana. 

No player from Gilgit-Baltistan has ever played for the Pakistan men’s cricket team, but the region will be represented on the biggest stage of the sport by Riazat Ali Shah.

Donning on his chest the Ugandan flag, Riazat, an athletic 26-year-old, will have Gilgit in his heart but will represent the East African nation, which qualified for the tournament — its first-ever World Cup — after finishing runner’s up in the 2022-23 ICC T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier in November last year. 

Riazat, with his all-round capability, was a key feature in the successful qualifying campaign, featuring among the top 10 players in both the bowling and batting charts of the competition. But his 10,000-kilometre-long journey from Gilgit to Uganda started a decade ago.

An associate member of the International Cricket Council since 1998, Uganda had been vying for a place in a World Cup event since 2003. They have participated in the qualifiers for each 50-over event since 2003, but their first shot at T20 World Cup participation only came in the 2014 edition.

Uganda will be competing at its first world cup in a few days. How did a young man from Gilgit-Baltistan end up playing cricket for the African country and help it qualify for this year’s T20 World Cup?

More or less during that time, Riazat, only 15 then, was undergoing a transition not every cricket-loving youngster in Pakistan is brave enough to make — from recreational tape-ball cricket in the streets to professional cricket on the grounds. But it isn’t that simple for aspiring professional cricketers from the region Riazat comes from.

“There is only one hard ball ground in Gilgit, the City Park, where I started playing hard ball cricket when I was 15 years old,” Riazat tells Eos. “The interest kept rising and I thought I should try to play for Gilgit-Baltistan Under-19s.”

Playing for the Gilgit-Baltistan U-19s, however, is not enough for a player to make it to the top level of domestic cricket in Pakistan — after all, there are hardly any facilities there to help player development. Representing the region can take a player only as far as Islamabad, where Riazat eventually landed.

From June 2013 to May 2014, Riazat featured in three one-day, eight two-day and two three-day matches for Islamabad U-19s, which, for him, was just not enough, especially after he’d put in the mental and emotional effort of adjusting within a different culture and environment.

“I did not get many opportunities — I don’t know if I wasn’t talented enough, or maybe [it was because] I was from another city,” Riazat says, musing about his time in the capital. 

Meanwhile, back in Islamabad’s Ugandan counterpart, Kampala, Ghulam Hunzai — a Pakistani expatriate from Hunza — was approached by a British-Indian businessman called Aziz Damani, who wanted to set up a cricket club named after himself.

Hunzai, since he moved to Kampala from Hunza in 2008 for work, played cricket for the Warriors Cricket Club, which was mostly made up of expats from Pakistan and India and played in the Uganda National League. Therefore, he was the right man for the job, along with Siva Koti, Damani’s man in Uganda. 

“The Aziz Damani Cricket Club was set up in 2015 and it was registered in the Uganda National League right away,” Hunzai, the club’s captain since then, tells Eos. 

With strong financial backing and its strategy of inducting expats from India and Pakistan, the Aziz Damani Cricket Club would go on to dominate the National League — which features year-long seasons of 20-over and 50-over cricket, with 22 teams across two divisions and which has been held since the late 1980s.

A year later, in 2016, Hunzai represented Uganda in the Jubilee Games — a multi-sport competition organised for athletes within the Ismaili community across the world. Riazat had also travelled to Dubai for the Games with the Pakistani outfit.

“We were on the hunt for young players for the Aziz Damani Cricket Club and we saw Riazat in the Jubilee Games,” says Hunzai. “Riazat was just 17 or 18 back then. He had the potential to play international cricket for Uganda and we told him that we wanted to sign him up for the club.”

A year later, Riazat was on the flight to Kampala. “The culture shock hit Riazat right away, but even before he could get used to Uganda, the country took him in its embrace,” says Hunzai.

“It was hard to adjust, coming from South Asia and living in an entirely different culture, where people spoke another language,” says Riazat. “It was hard for me for a couple of months, but it got easier because my teammates were friendly. They made me feel at home.”

Riazat adds that the Aziz Damani Cricket Club took care of his accommodation and food while also paying him daily allowances. 

It didn’t take too long for Riazat to get noticed. His first net practice session with the club was attended by the then Uganda head coach and former Kenyan legend Steve Tikolo, who invited him to the national team’s camp.

Riazat would go on to make his international debut two years later, against Botswana in the T20 World Cup Africa Region final in 2019. He now had the support of the Aziz Damani Club as well as a contract from the Uganda Cricket Association, which was enough for him to promise a long-term future with the national team.

It’s not only Riazat who has represented Uganda after settling as an expat in the country. The likes of Dinesh Nakrani and Ronak Patel — both featuring in Uganda’s qualifying campaign and now in their T20 World Cup squad — made their journey from India. When Riazat, Nakrani and Patel take to the field in the T20 World Cup, they will have their families and friends back in their respective hometowns rooting for them.

But all three of them will be driven by their love for Uganda, given the time they have put in for the country and how it has given them back.

“For me this is not a team of another country, this is my own team, these are my own players and this is my own country,” says Riazat. “When I came to Uganda I was just 18 years old, and I’ve been here for eight years now.

“Everything was new when I came here and I spent time with my teammates. They are my family away from home, they support me emotionally and mentally. We are very much attached to the fans as well.”

At the same time, Riazat doesn’t want to forget his own people back in Gilgit. “I’ve been receiving love from Gilgit-Baltistan since I started playing international cricket and especially when we qualified for the T20 World Cup. They are so proud that their very own Gilgit boy will play in the World Cup and will represent them on the big stage,” he says.

The cricket fraternity in Uganda, though, doesn’t consider Riazat and the likes of him as people from other countries. They own them like they would own a native Ugandan.

“We don’t want anyone to call players like Riazat Ali Shah, Dinesh Nakrani and Ronak Patel as overseas players,” the former Uganda international and the country’s cricket association head of communications Denis Musali tells Eos.

“They live here, they live with us, it’s not like they come here only to play cricket. They play in the local league, and they spend more time here compared to where they come from.

“They not only play cricket for Uganda, they are into the cultures too, and some of them speak the local language,” adds Musali. “For me, they are purely Ugandans.”

The writer is a member of staff. X: @shabbar_mir

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 26th, 2024