The Afghanistan wicketkeeper-batter talks about his rise from humble beginnings in Khost
Firdose Moonda18-Feb-2025Rahmanullah Gurbaz wanted to play cricket so badly that he got himself a secret job and used his earnings to buy a bat only to have it broken by one of his brothers.There’s a lot in that sentence and at the same time it is only a snapshot of the path the Afghan opening batter has walked to become an international sportsperson. From a childhood in the south-eastern province of Khost, where he played football for fun before discovering cricket on television, to being ranked eighth on the ICC’s ODI batting charts and 15th in the T20I rankings at the age of 23, Gurbaz seems to have the cricketing world at his feet. None of that would have happened for him if his family had had their way.”We have a big family and we had some kind of function at our home because my father had come back from Hajj,” Gurbaz says during the SA20, where he was playing for Pretoria Capitals, of an incident from his childhood. “There were a lot of guests at home and my brother sent me to bring tea for them. But when I went out, I started playing cricket and I forgot to bring the tea. When my brother came to look for me and someone told him I was playing cricket, he got really angry at me. And that’s when he broke my bat.”Related
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His brother was not the only one in his family who did not support his interest in cricket. Gurbaz’s father, a school principal, also wanted a different life for him. “He worked so hard. And he expected us [his children] to be educated, to become a doctor, to become an engineer, whatever it is, but to study,” Gurbaz says.As a boy, he was on board with that plan. “I was really good in my studies until sixth class, but as soon as I started cricket, I went a little away from my studies and just fell in love with cricket.”Gurzbaz discovered the game in its rudimentary form. “When I was in the village, there was nothing there – no facilities, no pitch, nothing,” he said. “We were just playing tape-ball cricket. Once I became a good tape-ball player, people wanted to select me in their teams. They played on concrete pitches or cement pitches, and I started playing cricket there also. People started to see that I was good and I started hard-ball cricket, which was really difficult for me because I was from a place where no one was playing cricket and no one liked cricket, especially my family. I struggled a lot. There was so much pressure on me, financially especially, but in the end my dream was to become a cricketer for Afghanistan, to achieve something for Afghanistan.”Gurbaz got his opportunities at the tail end of last year’s IPL. In the final, he got KKR off to a sharp start chasing a small target with 39 off 32 balls•AFP/Getty ImagesThat’s when he decided the only way to pursue his cricketing interest was to get a job. His first opportunity was literally on his doorstep, as it turned out. “We were building our own home and we gave that project to a developer, so I told him, ‘I will work for you, but don’t tell anyone because my father and my brother wont’ allow me to work.’ They wanted me to study and they were really strict about these things,” Gurbaz said. “I told him, for example, if you give someone $10 [to do some work], give me $5, but don’t tell my brother, I will just work with you and I will work very hard for you.”It was a short-term gig of just 16 days, but it gave Gurbaz enough money to buy his own pair of gloves and a bat. They didn’t last long. Shortly after that, his brother discovered how much time Gurbaz was dedicating to the game, at the expense of his household duties, and destroyed his equipment.Gurbaz realises, looking back, that his brother had what he thought were his best interests at heart. “He helped me a lot also after that,” he says. “He realised that I’m a very, very big fan of cricket and I really want to become a cricketer. And then he started supporting me. At that time, he wanted what was good for me because he was thinking that I have to study. He said, ‘If you just waste your time on cricket, later on, you will be nothing.'”Around the time his equipment took a beating, Gurbaz was already known to people in the Afghanistan Cricket Board, and he was being considered for their Under-19 side. He was 15 when selected for a training camp in India, but the problem was, he didn’t have any kit.”There was no bat with me because of these things, no family support, and financial problems. That was the hardest time for me,” Gurbaz says. “We had a match against India, my batting number came up and there was no bat. I was asking others, ‘Please, can you give me a bat?’ I got a bat from someone which was broken. At that time, with the U-19, everyone had financial problems. Everyone had just one bat, so that’s why nobody wanted to give their bat to anyone, because if it got broken, then they also don’t have a bat. That’s how it was for us – our U-19 side played with one bat. We came through very hard situations, every single player. I come from a very different culture.”Moving on up: at the 2018 U-19 World Cup, where Afghanistan made it to the semi-final. In the quarter-final against New Zealand, Gurbaz made 69 in a team total of 309•Kai Schwoerer/ICC/Getty ImagesAfter much convincing that cricket could be a viable career option, Gurbaz’s family agreed to let him pursue the sporting path. He was 16 when he made his Shpageeza Cricket League debut for the Mis Ainak Knights, and registered two ducks in his first two games. It was not until his third season, when he also made his T20I debut, that his instinctive talent took over and he started to play to potential.Everything Gurbaz learnt about batting was self-taught, he says, and his first proper introduction to coaching came with the national side. “When I started playing cricket, I was just doing my own things. If something worked, okay. If something didn’t work, then I stopped doing it. I didn’t learn from the coaches, to be really honest with you. I only learned from whatever was inside my body and natural to me,” he said. “Later on, when I came to the national side, Lance Klusener helped me a lot. He helped me with my mindset, not to change my cricket but try and make me mentally strong and give me some ideas on how I should improve my cricket skills.”Gurbaz also developed his game through exposure at the BPL and Lanka Premier League, and in 2021 he came into the international spotlight when he became the first Afghan player to score an ODI century on debut. From there, there was no looking back. He gained a reputation for being able to play a range of shots all around the ground. He says he doesn’t have a preference for anything in particular. “Every shot is my favourite shot. If I hit it for six, that’s my favourite.”But he is not just a slogger who bats for his strike rate. He has worked hard to refine his short-format game to build consistency, and along with experience in the other T20 leagues, his time in the IPL helped hugely. In 2023 he played 11 of KKR’s 14 IPL matches, with a modest return of 227 runs, albeit at a decent strike rate. The following season he was benched in favour of Phil Salt and only got the opportunity for game time in the qualifier and the final, after Salt left for England duty.Gurbaz was the top run-scorer in the 2024 T20 World Cup, where Afghanistan beat New Zealand, Australia and Bangladesh to make the semi-final•Darrian Traynor/ICC/Getty ImagesGurbaz turned what could have been a long two months on the sidelines into an extended training exercise. “I worked really hard when I was not playing because I had one thing on my mind: even if I am not playing in IPL, the T20 World Cup is coming and I need to be well prepared,” he says. “I batted for a long, long period of time. I would say, bring the bowlers, the net bowlers or a coach, please, come and throw the ball for me. I batted every single day, in all the different cities that we went to, I was just batting, batting, keeping, batting, keeping – in all different situations.”It paid off when he finished the T20 World Cup as the tournament’s leading run-scorer, with three fifties from eight matches. Afghanistan got to the semi-final of that World Cup, after narrowly missing out on the same at the 2023 ODI one. There’s a sense that they are inching closer to a global tournament title and Gurbaz feels it. “We are not that far behind,” he says. “If we focus, I’m sure that we can beat any team in any condition, but we don’t want to just think about winning. We need to focus on playing good cricket. When you play good cricket, the result will come to your side as well.”But he acknowledges that results matter, especially for Afghanistan, where cricket presents a sliver of hope to a nation under extreme oppression. There are severe restrictions on human rights under the Taliban, particularly for women, and international sanctions have crippled the economy. From a cricketing perspective, that means Afghanistan have never played a match at home, and like many in the team, Gurbaz lives in the UAE while his family remain behind. He returns to Afghanistan annually, often for around three weeks at a time to see his family, but would love to spend more time in “my beautiful Afghanistan”, despite being among the small number of players who recognise the injustices being committed there. In December last year he was among a handful of players who spoke out about the mistreatment of women and called for the right to education for women to be restored. That was risky, considering his family remain in the country, but it’s a risk he is willing to take, even as he feels both homesick and hell-bent on furthering his career.Coming to South Africa was part of that desire to get ahead. The SA20 gave him the opportunity to visit the country for the first time, and though Capitals did not make the playoffs, he spent some time immersing himself in the culture of Cape Town, where his friend Wayne Parnell showed him around. The experience also helped him learn about challenging batting conditions. This was the lowest-scoring edition of the SA20, and pitches were dry and slow across most of the country. “It’s always nice to understand different conditions and I feel in South Africa, every ground is totally different,” Gurbaz says. “I was happy about that. That’s why I signed to play here. I heard from everyone that it is totally different and I love that challenge. My performance was not that good, but it was good learning for me. I understand how things are here and how I can prepare myself for these different situations.””Every shot is my favourite shot. If I hit it for six, that’s my favourite”•Matthew Lewis/ICC/Getty ImagesAfghanistan may have to wait for the 2027 World Cup, which is being played in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, to benefit from his learnings, but their immediate consideration will be the Champions Trophy, where they are grouped with South Africa. A short, cutthroat competition makes for circumstances where a dangerous Afghan outfit, filled with talented players like Gurbaz, are at their best.They will carry the hopes of people who have little else. “We all know that cricket is the only happiness for Afghan people right now,” Gurbaz says. “And I hope it will become better. When we win matches for Afghanistan, it’s like Eid. It is the happiest day. They celebrate us winning a match like that. That’s why we all work very hard to win the matches for Afghanistan, because we just want them to give them happiness. When you make others happy, we believe that Allah will make you happy.”Among those who are happiest are, believe it or not, his family. On a trip back home in 2022, they came to watch him play for Kabul Eagles in the Shpageeza Cricket League, in a match against Hindukush Stars. “One of my younger brothers was there,” Gurbaz remembers.”I was on 99 and he called me from the crowd. He said, ‘Listen, be careful, be careful, make sure you make your hundred.’ There were thousands of people there and you cannot listen to all of them but as my brother called me, I recognised his voice and I looked for him in the crowd.”And all the things he had sacrificed to get to that point became worth it.
