MI Cape Town's Rashid Khan: from refugee to leg-spin superstar

The Afghanistan T201 captain, who lived as a refugee in Pakistan in his formative years, is a global cricket sensation these days. By Keanan Hemmonsbey

- By Keanan Hemmonsbey

The Durand Line — a 2,640km-long border between Afghanistan and Pakistan — is one of the most contentious borders in the world because Pakistan, but not Afghanistan, recognises it as the official border between the two countries.

It was set up in 1893 and split various tribal ranges. To this day, people on either side of the border, such as the Baloch and Pashtuns, share an identity.

From 2001 to 2021, millions of Afghans used the Durand Line to flee the US war in Afghanistan, which began after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center by the Taliban-allied and Afghanistan-based Al-Qaeda.

One of them was Rashid Khan, now Afghanistan's T201 cricket captain and one of the biggest names in this version of the sport.

Khan (26), a megastar and also captain of the MI Cape Town in South Africa's SA20 - who led them to their maiden title earlier this year - lived as a refugee in Pakistan in his formative years along with his 10 siblings.

He used to trek between the two countries as an adolescent and spent a lot of time in Pakistan perfecting his craft of big hitting and wizard-like leg-spin bowling.

It's not too dissimilar to the story of how cricket in the modern era started in his home country in the 1990s, when the sport was brought to the country by Afghans returning from Pakistan after the Soviet-Afghan War between 1979 and 1989.

Getting better

It's little surprise, then, that the player on whom the leg-spinner has modelled his game is Pakistani cult legend Shahid Afridi.

Afridi, like Khan, was a power hitter in the lower order, but what he liked was the speed at which the Pakistani delivered the ball. It was different from the legendary Shane Warne.

"It's about the action," Khan said in an exclusive interview with Daily Maverick that was organised by Red Bull after he had been announced as an ambassador for the energy drink.