Pak vs Eng, 2nd Test: Who is Abrar Ahmed? Debutant who claimed seven wickets to rattle Stokes & Co.

After losing the first Test versus England, Babar Azam-led Pakistan locked horns with the visitors on Day 1 of the second and penultimate match in Multan on Friday (December 09). Pakistan handed a Test cap to AbrarAhmedand the right-arm leg-break bowler accounted for seven for 114 to make a solid impression at the international level. With this, the 24-year-old became only the third Pakistani bowler to claim as many wickets on debut innings afterMohammad Zahid andMohammad Nazir.

After England opted to bat first, they were scoring at a brisk rate once again but kept losing at regular intervals. Courtesy of fifties from Ben Duckett (63) and Ollie Pope (60), and vital contributions from captain Ben Stokes, Will Jack and Mark Wood, England posted 281 all-out in 51.4 overs but the star of the innings was debutant Abrar. He dismissed the top seven to make a memorable start. Here's all you need to know about him:

An upcoming spinner who didn't know legend Abdul Qadir? Yes, you heard that right!

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Mushtaq Ahmed, head coach of Pakistan’s National Cricket Academy in Lahore in 2017, asked Abrar about Pakistan's legendary spinner Abdul Qadir. To his surprise, the youngster hadn't even heard his name. "Ye kaun hai, kabhi naam nahi suna (Who is he, never heard his name)," said Abrar. “Everyone started laughing and Mushtaq bhai told him ‘you’ve registered yourself as a leg-spinner and you don’t know about the greatest we ever produced,’” Sajid Ahmed, Abrar's brother,told The Indian Express.

Impressing from the early days

Abrar is the youngest of eight siblings. He was close to his mother and the brightest among all siblings. In his early days, he used to play tape-ball cricket when one day he suddenly heard about a cricket trial at Rashid Latif’s academy and decided to show up. Muhammad Masroor, then Pakistan’s U-19 coach, was supervising the trials and got mighty impressed by what he saw of young Abrar.

'Fingers like iron rods'

Masroor recalled about Abrar's variations and said, "He was bowling all variations with the same grip). He doesn’t have that massive turn. He was bowling on the stumps, and no one was able to read his lengths. I immediately asked him whether he had ever played with the hard ball. The answer was ‘no’. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Out of curiosity, I checked his fingers, and those were like iron rods."

Rapid strides

In 2016, the 24-year-old spinner Abrar bagged as many as 53 wickets in Zonal U-19 in Karachi. Soon, Masroor passed on his videos to Rashid Latif, the then Karachi Kings'director of cricket. As a result, he was one of the emerging picks of the franchise in the PSL 2017.

After his first stint in the PSL, things turned upside down for Abrar as he suffereda stage-five stress fracture. Hence, he was kept out of action for quite long (two years). After being constantly motivated by his father, he returned to the scenein early 2020 while representing Sindh’s second XI. In the Quaid-e-Azam Second XI tournament in the Covid-hit year, Abrar accounted for a whopping 57 wickets at 11.75.

In the 2022-23 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, Abrar returned with 43 wickets, averaging21.95. Such was his consistency that hetook five five-wicket hauls in seven matches, helping his cause to earn a Test call-up versus England.