Imran Tahir: Hard work and preparation are the keys to success in T20

Imran Tahir: Hard work and preparation are the keys to success in T20: Your profession takes you places and if the profession happens to be playing cricket, you virtually ‘live out of the suitcase’.

The Lahore-born, 36-year-old, Mohammad Imran Tahir can certainly vouch for this.

As a member of the Pakistan U19 team, Tahir first travelled to South Africa in 1999. He was destined to discover his future wife then, Sumayya Dildar, an Indian-origin South African. Subsequently they got married and have a son.

Tahir had to take the toughest call of his life. Being successful in locating a support system from a local friend, who incidentally happened to be the franchisee of Titan, Tahir relocated permanently to South Africa.

Describing his shift of base from Pakistan to South Africa, Tahir said, “When we made this decision it was not very easy for any of us. I wanted to achieve something in life. I know that I had the talent and wanted to play at the highest level. It was hard for the first couple of years in SA. We were thinking differently, but both of us remained positive”.

On 1 January 2011, Tahir qualified for representing South Africa. The Durban-based spinner who was initially tagged as a ‘Test specialist’, made his Test debut for SA in 2011 against Australia.

Since then he has featured in 16 Test matches and has picked up 43 wickets at an average of 46.36 and 3.56 economy rate. His best bowling figure of 5/32 was achieved in the match against Pakistan at DSC Cricket Stadium, Dubai in 2013.

He also has the best match figure of 8/113.

Tahir made his ODI debut for South Africa against West Indies on 24 February 2011, in Delhi in which he took 4 wickets for 41 runs in his 10 over spell.

Shirking away the ‘Test specialist” tag, Tahir proved to be a genuine match winner in the shorter formats also.

He surpassed the record of Paul Adams (29 ODI wickets in 24 matches) by claiming the same number of wickets in 15 matches. Currently, he has 77 wickets from 44 games at an average of 21.67 and 4.36 economy rate.

Tahir’s best bowling performance has been 5/45 in a World Cup 2015 game against West Indies at Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney, Australia. With this performance, he became only the second SA spinner to take a ‘fifer’ and the first South African to do so in a World Cup tournament.

He also has five ‘four wicket’ hauls – thrice against West Indies and once each against Sri Lanka, Pakistan and England.

Imran became the best spinner with the most number of wickets for SA in ICC World Cup. He has bagged 29 wickets in the 2015 edition of the tournament.

When enquired by TOI about his constant travel owing to his profession and his ‘living out of the suitcase’, keeping him away from his family, he said, “I am lucky that I have my wife Sumayya and son Gibran in my life. But it is really tough on them. My son is about a year old and for eight months out of those, I have not seen him. They were with me for a couple of months in Australia during the World Cup (2015) which was really nice”.

Thanks to technology, Tahir feels he is never far away from his family. He goes on to say, “It is really tough from their point of view. My wife understands the job. I get to see them every day over Skype. It is not how you want things to be, but at least, it’s there”.

Making his debut against Sri Lanka on 2^nd August, 2013 at Colombo, in the T20 format, Tahir has played in 18 games (including the one played at Cuttack on 5^th October, 2015) and has picked up 27 wickets at an average of 15.77 and 6.45 as the economy rate.

His best bowling performance of 4/21 was against The Netherlands at Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, Chittagong, Bangladesh, on 27^th March, 2014. He bettered the record of Johan Botha who had taken 3/16.

Tahir was awarded the T20 Cricketer of South Africa for 2013. He is the highest wicket taker, as a leg-spinner in T20 format for South Africa.

Imran Tahir was involved in the highest 10th wicket partnership for South Africa in T20 cricket. Tahir contributed 8 runs and Lonwabo Tsotsobe made 1 run. The partnership was 10* unbeaten against the Netherlands.

In the ongoing Mahatma GIandhi-Nelson Mandela series, Tahir went wicketless in the first T20 International match at Dharmashala. He gave away 35 runs in 4 overs.

Opening the bowling along with Kyle Abbot at Cuttack in the second game, Tahir took 2 wickets (Raina and Harbhajan) in successive deliveries and was on the threshold of a hat-trick but was foiled by Ravichandran Ashwin. Tahir gave away 24 runs in 4 overs.

Speaking on the strategy of using Tahir upfront at Cuttack, the SA skipper, Faf du Plessis, said,  “I suppose it was a gut feel to try and use Immi upfront. He hasn’t bowled in the Power Play, but it was just a case of changing things up and trying to be unpredictable, so the batsmen can’t plan ahead.”

“I thought there was great variation in those first six overs. There was spin, there was pace and then we got wickets. Obviously there were two great run-outs as well but the key is to get wickets upfront. Our bowlers did that today. And then the guys coming in after six overs kept trying to do that as well.”

Well, the strategy worked for SA and they went on to win the match and take an unassailable lead of 2-0.

The third and final encounter will be played at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, on 8^th October 2015. Eden Gardens has been a ‘happy hunting ground’ for the spinners and might just about suit Imran Tahir who might go on to establish a new record.