Exclusive: Sunrisers Hyderbad's newly-recruit Abdul Samad credits Irfan Pathan for his success
The Indian Premier League is a tournament where young players get a chance to showcase their skills at a grand stage. Abdul Samad from Jammu is one of the youngsters, who was ready to make a name of his own in IPL 2020, but due to coronavirus pandemic, the 13th edition of the tournament has been indefinitely postponed.
Abdul was bought for INR 20 lakh by 2017 IPL champion Sunrisers Hyderabad. Abdul's journey from Jammu to IPL was not easy as he credited his success to former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan.
In an exclusive interview with IndiaTV, Abdul recalled his journey from Jammu's Ustad Mohalla to the cash-rich IPL.
"I am a resident of Ustad Mohalla of Jammu and Irfan Pathan took our trial in Science College here. In which many players took part and I was selected by Irfan Bhai for the cricket team of Jammu and Kashmir State," Abdul Samad told IndiaTV.
Abdul, who is known for his hard-hitting batting and leg-spin, said that Irfan saw potential in him and gave him confidence that he can score a century too.
"When Irfan Bhai met me, he told me that you get out after scoring 30 - 35 runs and tell me to work on that. He told me you can also score a century," Abdul said.
Abdul has a decent record in domestic cricket, in 11 T20s he has slammed 240 runs at 136.36 strike rate. While, he has played only 8 List A ODIs, in which he scored 237 at an excellent strike rate of 125.39. He also made his Ranji debut last season, in which he managed to score 592 runs in 10 first-class matches.
The hard-hitting batsman also talked about how Irfan helped him to get through rough patches of his domestic career.
"Once when I was playing in a domestic one-day tournament, I was dismissed early in the first two-three matches. After that, Irfan Bhai talked to me personally about that and explain me several things. Not only that, he also talked to me about hard-hitting batting. Because of which I made improvement in my game." he added.
Abdul claims that he is disappointed that IPL has been postponed as he was ready to give his best.
"Yes, a little disappointed because it was my first IPL and I wanted to give my best," he said.
He further talked about SRH's franchise and said he is eager to meet Rashid Khan and wants to learn a lot of things about leg-spin.
"Yes, we have very good players in our team but whenever IPL happens I would like to meet Rashid Khan and will talk and learn a lot of things about leg-spin," Abdul concluded.
