Left-arm medium pacer Tanvir Ul-Haq has taken 47 wickets this season — the joint highest for Rajasthan. (Express photo)He worked in a car garage, delivered newspapers at homes, sold children’s clothes door to door and had his personal documents not been stolen, Tanvir Ul-Haq would have landed a job as a nightwatchman in Jaipur.
Tanvir, 27, is a left-arm medium pacer for Rajasthan, who has taken 47 wickets in the ongoing Ranji Trophy. Along with teammate Aniket Choudhary, who too has 47 wickets, Tanvir is the leader of Rajasthan’s bowling attack. The team will face Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy quarterfinals in Bengaluru from Tuesday.
Life has not been easy for the Dholpur pacer, to say the least. In his late teens, when he wasn’t selected for Rajasthan’s U-17 team, he had to pick up odd jobs to help his family. His father, who works at a tailor’s shop, didn’t like the idea of his young son working and asked him to quit.
Tanvir would, those days, finish practice sessions and sneak into the garage to work for five hours; he was paid Rs 300 a month but had to quit after his father found out.
“One day abbu (father) saw me and told me to leave this job immediately. What could I have done, cricket khali pet nahi khel sakte. (you can’t play cricket on an empty stomach). I knew my family’s financial condition wasn’t good, so I wanted to work for my cricket expenses. For someone who hasn’t seen one rupee, 300 was a huge amount,” Tanvir recalls the days of struggle.
The young pacer made a plan with a friend, who used to deliver newspapers at a nearby colony. His father thought Tanvir was leaving home for early-morning jogs and namaaz at a mosque but in reality the youngster, after he was done with his prayers, would borrow his friend’s bicycle, pick up the newspapers from a vendor and deliver them in homes. Little did he know then that one day he would see his name in those newspapers. But when he had an accident while riding the bicycle and was injured, his father learnt what he was up to. “Then I had to leave this job too,” Tanvir says.
Meanwhile, he continued with his cricket but had to wait a while for recognition. There was no place in the Rajasthan senior team and he continued to try his hand at odd jobs – he tried selling children’s clothes in a push-cart in nearby villages but had to stop as it didn’t bring him much money.
It was during those days of struggle that he got a call from Sumendra Tiwari, his mentor and first coach, to attend U-22 trials in Udaipur. Tiwari was the first person to spot the talent of Tanvir, who had gone with his neighbour Dushyant Tyagi to the Dholpur nets. Tanvir says it was Tiwari who gave him his first cap, cricket jersey and shoes.
Tanvir was selected in the U-22 trials and his cricketing career began to look up. But finances kept tripping him up. Like the instance when he went to a practice match in his father’s pyjamas because he didn’t have cricket whites. Not having enough money to travel for district games, he used to sit on the roofs of buses to make it to the grounds.
“I remember once sir said, ‘tomorrow is a practice match so everyone has to come in complete whites’. I didn’t have white clothes. I wore my father’s pyjamas and went for my match. Everybody laughed, my neighbour Dushyant Tyagi then told the coach that I am poor and can’t afford anything. Next day, Tiwari sir gave me the entire stuff for free — he is still giving it. I owe so much to him.”
Despite making his Ranji debut in 2015, Tanvir couldn’t get a long run. He was competing with the likes of Deepak Chahar, Pankaj Singh, Nathu Singh, Choudhary and later Khaleel Ahmed. All of these pacers were seen as India material. With Khaleel and Deepak on India duty, and Pankaj shifting to Puducherry, Tanvir finally got a long stint to prove his mettle. “Things are going fine because I got to play so many games. Earlier, I used to play one or two games and then get dropped,” he says.
Ask him whether life is on track, and he isn’t quite sure. Like so many domestic cricketers, he too has seen his teammates getting big pay cheques in IPL but no one has shown any interest in him.
He went for a Mumbai Indians trials few years ago and was told that he will be judged during the T20 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. “I wasn’t picked, what can I do? Do you know anyone? Kuch job ho toh bolna.”
