2 weeks Ago By Daya Sagar
This Eid, the sevaiya at Mohammad Naeem Ansari's house tasted sweeter than usual - just the evening before, his son Zeeshan Ansari played his first IPL match after waiting for long. He didn't just make his IPL debut , he made it an occasion, with the wickets of three international batters: Jake Fraser-McGurk, Faf du Plessis and KL Rahul. Soon, people from the neighbourhood started gathering outside Naeem's small, half-built house in Chaudhary Tola in Lucknow.
Even the ones that had taunted Naeem for Zeeshan "wasting his time" and "dreaming big". The idea had struck Naeem in the early 2000s. Naeem was married, had children, and didn't want them to do the same work - of running their tailor shop - his brothers and he did.
He felt that if a child from the family did well in a sport, a government job could come with it, and that would help the family. In the late-2000s, Naeem got four children from his joint family enrolled in the Government Sports Academy not far from their house. That's where Zeeshan learnt the basics of cricket and now, almost two decades on, has been Sunrisers Hyderabad's primary spinner at IPL 2025 , though not with the kind of success that debut had promised: he has picked up just two more wickets in five subsequent matches.
Zeeshan started playing cricket at the age of four or five, like many kids in India do, on the streets around his house, but unlike most others, he was more interested in bowling than batting. Apparently, even at that early stage, Zeeshan tried to give the ball a rip. Gopal Singh, Zeeshan's coach at the academy, tells ESPNcricinfo, "He came to me when he was 11 or 12 years old.
Before that, he had gone to another academy in Chowk [an area in Lucknow] for a year, but that was a little far from his house. Even though his deliveries didn't quite reach the batters, he used to bowl legspin from the very beginning. "Some children have a body language that suggests that they can become good players in the future.
When Zeeshan used to train, run, and play cricket with a tennis ball, that quality was visible. However, it was only after two or three years of training that I was convinced he could become a good legspinner." Zeeshan would wake up early and go to the academy, where he would catch hold of whichever batters he could and bowl at them throughout the day.
When one batter got tired, another would be summoned, and this continued. It didn't stop when he got home either. His uncle Gayas Ansari would bat for him in the lane adjacent to the house.
Gayas had been given the responsibility of ferrying Zeeshan to and from the academy and playing with him at home. In exchange, Gayas - who played his share of tennis-ball cricket in his youth - didn't have to spend as much time at the tailor's shop as his brothers did. In 2014, when Zeeshan was 15 and had performed well at the club and district level, he was called for the Under-16 state (Uttar Pradesh) trials.
He was not selected but, remarkably, got into the Under-19 and Under-23 teams the same season. At the Under-19 Cooch Behar Trophy in 2014-15, Zeeshan took 40 wickets - the highest - and at the Colonel CK Nayudu Under-23 tournament, he got 18 wickets, including three five-fors, at an average of 13.44.
Zeeshan was rewarded immediately by being named in India's 2016 Under-19 World Cup squad, led by Ishan Kishan. But, with spin-bowling allrounders like Washington Sundar , Mayank Dagar and Mahipal Lomror in the squad, Zeeshan got a chance to play only two matches. He got paid, though, and used it to repair the leaks in his house.
After the World Cup, Zeeshan took 30 wickets, the most for Uttar Pradesh, in the CK Nayudu Trophy in 2016-17, and was selected for the Ranji Trophy the following year. Making his debut under Suresh Raina's captaincy against Railways, Zeeshan returned twin three-fors, but his name was missing from the playing XI for the next match. He has only played five first-class matches so far for 17 wickets to go with one wicketless outing in T20s at the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in February 2019.
.
