Battle-hardened by struggle, comeback-man Parvez Rasool's dream lives on

The Srinagar-Jammu highway, a thin layer of gravel slithering across the valleys of India’s northernmost state, is only one of the two road links that connect Jammu & Kashmir to the rest of the country. Now buried deep in snow, it is experiencing the torrid ‘Chillai-Kalan’, one of the harshest phases of the 40-day winter spell.

‘Harsh’ isn’t a forceful enough word to describe the travails of the people in the valley. Like a bird trapped in a gilded cage, the alluring beauty of nature is a consolation to the violence-wrapped lives they experience every day, cut away from the rest of the country.

Snuck away in one corner is Bijbehara, a town 50 kilometres from Srinagar, one end of the highway. The only major connection to cricket, till a few years back, was the bat-making industry that has flourished here with the simple pieces of wood that make one of the two main equipment of the game. And then came Parvez Rasool.

A comeback made possible by hard work

For Rasool, the weary winters have brought a ray of sunshine, as he returns to the Indian team after two and a half years – his sole international appearance coming in 2014. Yet, he was already a happy aberration to other cricketers from the state: he is the only one from the state to have played for the Indian team against an international side.

It has hardly been a bed of roses for Rasool, who has worked relentlessly to erase the marks of a trouble-riddled childhood set in a tumultuous section of the country. His very birthplace was the site of a bloody massacre when he was just four years old.

An off-spinner in the classic mould, Rasool didn’t let the barren lands, the lack of infrastructure, or the complex Kashmir problem get in the way of an Indian cap. When Bishen Singh Bedi became the coach of the state team, Rasool got a mentor who helped him shape his career in the right direction. But the former captain left soon, owing to the lack of a proper system in place.

A proven performer for J&K, Rasool had a watershed year in 2012-13. He picked up 33 wickets and scored 594 runs in seven matches, and was amply rewarded by a place in the A squad.

He snared the likes of Steven Smith, Matthew Wade and Ed Cowan amongst his seven victims, proving that he belonged to the big stage. It didn’t take him much time to bag an IPL contract, and he was soon on the Pune Warriors’ boat.

Yet, despite a breakthrough against Sri Lanka in 2014, and a big contract with Sunrisers Hyderabad the same year, Rasool was pushed to the sidelines. Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra hogged the limelight across the three formats, hardly giving another spinner a semblance of a chance to look for a gap and peek in.

Rasool continued, plying his trade with doggedness and stacking up the figures across seasons to make sure he wasn’t a forgotten man. The 2016-17 Ranji season turned out to be another breakthrough year for Rasool.

Always someone who expresses his gratitude to the Almighty for his success, Rasool came back into the reckoning, despite the presence of fresher and younger talents. 629 runs in nine games, at an average of close to 40, and 38 wickets – including seven five-wicket hauls – have made him the most successful off-spinner this season, catapulting him into the limelight yet again.

Under Ajinkya Rahane, Rasool got a chance to represent the ‘A’ team once again, this time for a warm-up match against England. With Shahbaz Nadeem, the highest wicket-taker of this season bowling from the other end, Rasool picked up three English batsmen, a figure which Ashwin, India’s premier off-spinner, achieved across the entire ODI series.

The excellent Ranji numbers and the subsequent performance in the warm-up were enough for the selectors to choose him as one of the replacements for Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Life has come full circle for the 27-year-old, who sees himself as a “bowler who can bat”.

“My biggest motivation is to keep playing well and getting Jammu and Kashmir on the world map because we have fallen way behind. The players in the state are talented, yet without the required infrastructure, they just cannot advance forward,” is how he looks at the situation.

While no one else could do what Rasool has done for his state, he is ready, yet again, with his earnest-looking visage and mile-broad smile, to sneak past the barbed wires of politics, unrest and stigma. They might have tattered his hands, but they’ve made his resolve stronger.

The highway will be clear again, the barren valley will be vivid with colours in a few months and bat-making will thrive once more. Parvez Rasool will don the Indian colours, once again becoming the beacon of hope for countless kids as he walks past the valley on a tightrope, a ball in his hand and a prayer on his lips.