Salman Rashid: Mashoor-e-zamana Kafeel bhai ko salaam -

Anyone who had frequently driven around the highways of Pakistan and kept their eyes open back in the 1980s and well into the 90s could just not have missed the eye-catching slogan on the rear bumpers of passing lorries — and there was scarcely a long-distance hauler that did not bear this slogan. ‘Kafeel bhai ko salaam,’ it would say in the Nastaliq script. But the clincher was the ending, also in Urdu: ‘Mashoor-e-zamana right arm, left arm spin bowler of Ghotki.’

While still in school in the early 1970s, Kafeel began to play cricket as a left arm spinner with the ambition of getting into the national team. Jim Laker (of Australia?) who had taken a record of nineteen wickets in 1956 was his idol and for the sake of Pakistan Kafeel wanted to break this apparently unbeatable record. From photos he had, he painted Laker’s portrait, placed it a vantage so that his hero looked upon him and taught himself to bowl with the right arm ‘just like Laker’. Now with this ability of being able to bowl with both arms, he thought he could floor any batsmen with his variety he could offer in a single over.

Mashoor-e-zamana Kafeel bhai ko salaam