Not every cricket story is pretty. Some are just hard. Arshad Khan’s story is one of those.
Gopalganj village. Seoni district. Madhya Pradesh. December 20, 1997. A boy is born into a house where cricket is a luxury nobody can afford. Ashfaq Khan, his father, is a schoolteacher. Also a farmer.
He looks at his eight-year-old son in 2006 and sees something. The kid is hitting sixes. Against boys twice his size. On a ground with no turf. No proper pitch. Nothing.
Ashfaq makes a decision. This boy will play cricket. Proper cricket. Not district-level nonsense where nobody watches and nothing happens. He does not know how. He does not know if they can afford it. He just knows. And that knowing costs them everything.
A month’s bread for a bundle of willow
Fifteen thousand rupees. That is what Ashfaq earned in a month. One cricket kit was more costly than that. Aaliya, Arshad’s mother, still talks about that month. They survived on air. On prayers. On the hope that this boy with the big bat swing would make it worth it.
There was no coach in Seoni. Nobody qualified within a hundred kilometres. So Ashfaq became the coach. Eight years. From when the boy was eight to when he was sixteen. Ashfaq had played district cricket himself. He knew what a cut shot looked like. He knew when a pull was timed.
He took Arshad to Abdul Kalam. Local coach. Seoni town. Kalam watched the boy bat. Just stood there. Then he told Ashfaq something. Not using this boy would be a crime. Against cricket. Against everything.
At eleven, Arshad was playing MP Under-14. Against boys three years older. He toured Bangladesh with the Under-16 team. He was an opening batsman then. Left-handed. Clean technique. Nobody thought he would bowl. Least of all him.
Then came the accident. Selection trial. Hand injury. Could not hold the bat properly. Panic. He grabbed the ball instead. Just to stay in front of the selectors. Six-foot-four. Left arm.
The ball bounced from his hand like it had a mind of its own. The scouts looked up. A batsman became a bowler because his hand hurt. That is cricket for you. One small thing. Everything changes.
Three hundred kilometres and two years of darkness
Three in the morning. Bus to Jabalpur. Three hundred kilometres. Sleep on the bus. Bowl ten overs. No turf. Uneven ground. Bus back. Arshad did this for years. Never missed a single match. Not one.
His brother Zakaria says Arshad enjoys challenges. That is the polite version. The real version? The boy was starving. Not for food. For cricket. For a chance. For something more than a village in Madhya Pradesh where nobody cared about the sport.
But the body does not care about hunger. 2017 to 2019. Injuries. Multiple. He stopped playing. Almost completely. His friends moved up. He stayed back. Seoni has no sports medicine. No physio. Nothing. Just a boy sitting at home wondering if it is over.
His father and Abdul Kalam refused to let him give up. Those two years? Arshad calls them his years of despair. But they made him. Made him in a way that no net session ever could. When you have climbed back from nothing, a bad over in the IPL does not destroy you. It just makes you angry.
Then 2019-20 happened. CK Nayudu Trophy. Thirty-six wickets in ten games. Four hundred runs. Against Assam, MP were 87 for 7. Arshad walked in. Made 134. With the tail. Against Mumbai, he hit 86 off 54 balls. Five sixes. Nine fours. Dragged his team from 112 for 7 to 229. Took wickets too.
Mumbai Indians scouts were there. Of course they were. Six-foot-four left-armer. Can bat at seven. Can hit sixes. That is exactly what every IPL team wants from domestic cricket.
Auction night the father could not watch
February 2022. IPL mega auction. Bangalore. Ashfaq Khan is sitting in his house in Gopalganj. Cannot look at the TV. Too much anxiety. Too much riding on this. He gets up. Goes to the mosque. Maghreeb namaz. Evening prayer. Stays there longer than usual. Just praying. Just waiting.
When he comes back, the village has taken over his house. Crackers. Drums. Sweets. Shouting. Mumbai Indians bought his son. Twenty lakh rupees. Zakaria finds his father at the mosque steps and whispers it to him. Ashfaq offers shukrana. The prayer of gratitude.
Next morning, Arshad video-calls his father from Gujarat. Ashfaq is smiling. Almost blushing. Arshad waited years to see that smile.
But cricket is cruel. Mid-season 2022. Injury again. Eight months out. Zero IPL games. Mumbai Indians, to their credit, keep him for 2023. Zero games. But they believe. They see something the numbers do not show.
His IPL debut finally comes. April 2, 2023. Chinnaswamy Stadium. RCB. Almost a full year after he was signed. Six games that season. Five wickets. Economy rate? 13.41. Ugly. Very ugly. But against Rajasthan Royals on April 30, he takes 3 for 39 on a flat deck. Sanju Samson. Shimron Hetmyer. Yashasvi Jaiswal. All gone. That is Arshad. He might go for fifteen in an over. But he will also take the wicket that matters.
A night he almost pulled off a heist
LSG buys him in 2024. Twenty lakh again. Four games. One wicket. Looks like another fringe player heading for the scrapheap. Then May 14, 2024. Delhi Capitals. LSG are collapsing. Arshad walks in at number 8 when score was 101/6. Game is basically gone.
He hits 58 not out. Thirty-three balls. Three fours. Five sixes. Kuldeep Yadav. Ishant Sharma. He attacks them like he has been doing this his whole life. Fifty in twenty-five balls. LSG still lose. But everyone who watches sees something. High bat speed. Calm head.
Clearing the boundary against real bowlers in a chase. That one innings changes everything. Gujarat Titans pay 1.30 crore in the 2025 mega auction. Five hundred and fifty percent jump. From scrapheap to crore player. Because of thirty-three balls.
The 6 for 9 that rewrote the record books
December 6, 2025. Jadavpur University ground. Kolkata. Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. MP versus Chandigarh. Four overs. One maiden. Six wickets. Nine runs. 2 top order batters out for ducks in his 1st over. Comes back in the nineteenth. Cleans up the middle and lower order. Previous tournament record? Six for thirteen. Arshad breaks it.
This is not a fluke. Not a green-top miracle. This is a bowler who has found control. Understands his angles. Knows when to go fuller. When to hit the deck. Ashish Nehra at Gujarat Titans teaches him to simplify. Nehra does that to fast bowlers. Two sentences. That is all. Not twenty.
The 2026 season shows what that means at the top
April 30, 2026. Narendra Modi Stadium. Ahmedabad. RCB. Cruising at 71 for 2. Devdutt Padikkal & Rajat Patidar looking dangerous. Arshad comes on in the eighth over. Changes the match. Short ball to Rajat Patidar. Caught by Jason Holder at deep backward square leg.
Comes back later. Krunal Pandya gone. Venkatesh Iyer gone. Three for twenty-two. 3.2 overs. Rashid Khan keeps pressure from the other end. Rabada takes Kohli. But Arshad breaks the partnership. Triggers the collapse.
Economy this season? 8.86. Strike rate? 8.80. The boy who bowled on uneven village tracks is now bowling middle overs for one of the smartest IPL teams.
The slip that did not stop him
Earlier in 2025-26. Match against LSG in Ahmedabad. First ball of his spell. Arshad slips horribly in his run-up. Falls badly. Awkwardly. Everyone freezes. Teammates. Opposition. Physio runs out. Looks serious. Everyone thinks he is done for the day.
He refuses to leave. Gets up. Waves the physio away. Bowls his over. Small thing? Maybe. But in the Gujarat Titans dressing room, it means something. This team values toughness over reputation. Arshad fits right in.
What comes next
Arshad Khan is twenty-eight. 21 IPL matches. 17 wickets. 124 runs. Strike rate 140.91. Those numbers do not scream superstar. But numbers lie with players like him. Teams needs what he offers.
Tall left-arm seamer. Can bat at seven or eight. Can bowl powerplay. Can bowl middle overs. Has the guts for the tough overs. Has the bat speed to clear the boundary when needed. His 6 for 9 in SMAT puts him on the scouts radar. His 3 for 22 against RCB proves he can do it on the biggest stage.cr
Gopalganj to the Indian team. Not a straight line. Never is. Arshad has already walked the hardest parts. The despair years. The injury that stole his first IPL season. The father who spent more on a cricket kit than he earned in a month. The 3 AM buses to Jabalpur. Every single one of those moments built this player.
Ashfaq Khan watches every match now. No more mosque visits during auctions. He sits in front of the TV. Phone in hand. Waiting for his son’s name. That smile Arshad waited years for? It is permanent now. You can see it every time the camera cuts to the stands.
Some cricket stories write themselves. Arshad Khan’s never did. His father wrote the first chapter. Abdul Kalam wrote the second. Arshad wrote everything else. One difficult over at a time.
