Isn’t it? Imagine what would it mean to come from such sort of an area and play for a senior state cricket team? This is what defines the road of Poonch’s only top-level cricketer, Nawaz Rather.
A wicket-keeper batsman whose parents decided to send him to a religious school in order to read and memorize Quran, finally after pursuing his parents’ wishes, has now climbed the first step of his own ‘big dream’, which is to play cricket at the highest level.
Nawaz, 24, appeared for Jammu and Kashmir in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on Thursday against Manipur, becoming the only player from district Poonch to play for J&K senior state-level team.
However, he didn’t get the opportunity to show his skills with the bat, but with his watchful wicket-keeping, he already left a mark.
Coming from the village Dhangri in Poonch, which is just a few kilometres away from the India-Pakistan border and remains in the spotlight for all wrong reasons, the journey has been quite challenging for Rather.
After playing seven school nationals and captaining J&K for three times at the U-19 level, it took Nawaz seven long years to get in the reckoning of J&K senior cricket team.
Rather first and most credits his success to his uncle, Mr. Azam Rather, who has been his backbone during his early days with the sport,
Been around the space where people think one and hundred times before going out of their houses, Nawaz never missed his cricket practice, despite knowing it could even cost him his life,
Having cruised past all these hardships, the youngster now aims to go even higher in the game to see a glint of joy on the ‘dejected’ faces of the people from his town.
Rather also mentioned that he idolizes, J&K skipper and the state’s only international cricketer, Parvez Rasool,
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