Leggie Mohd Enaan follows Saqlain's guidance to secure a spot in India U-19 team

MUMBAI: One valuable piece of advice from former Pakistan spinner Saqlain Mushtaq that Mohammed Enaan’s father, Shanavas Moidutty, has always remembered and followed in his son’s cricket journey is to never alter his natural bowling action.

It has worked well. On Saturday, the 17-year-old leg-spinner from Kerala was selected in the India Under-19 team for the multi-format home series against Australia.

Enaan had first cricketing lessons in the UAE, where his father was working as an engineer. Around that time, Saqlain, the former stalwart Pakistan off-spinner, was conducting a short coaching camp there and Enaan’s father enrolled him in it.

“Enaan is not a classical leg-spinner. He bowls with a quick-arm action. Some of the coaches can try to change the action, make the bowler flight. Saqlain told me, “the boy is doing well, don’t change his action, just let him keep doing what he is doing, this is his strength”,” recalled Moidutty.

“At that time two coaches from Kerala were also holding a camp in the UAE and advised me that Enaan was talented and to get him to India for better training. With so many coaches seeing talent in him, I decided to shift my family to Thrissur to help Enaan avail of good coaching while I stayed back to work in the UAE,” he said.

The 12-year-old was enrolled under coach Dinesh Gopalakrishnan at the Athreya Cricket Academy. “When he joined my camp, I could see he was an immensely talented bowler. His success is a collective effort by his family. It was a big sacrifice for the mother to move here with the kids for cricket coaching while the father worked in the UAE,” said Dinesh.

While all the academy trainees received equal attention and opportunities, what helped Enaan improve faster was the lockdown period during the Covid pandemic from 2020. “The family had rented a house at walking distance from the ground. Due to travel restrictions at that time, no other player could come for practice. Enaan spent a lot of time at the ground and we could entirely focus on his game. We got enough time to work on his bowling and batting; there was no match, no competition, no selection trials. It worked wonders for him. That was the time his batting also improved,” said Dinesh.

The work put in showed in a local tournament in 2022, the Coromandel Cup in Kakkanad, near Ernakulam. In the semi-final, the 15-year-old took the wickets of the big names of Kerala, Sachin Baby and Mohammed Azharuddeen, who were playing for AG’s Office team. It was when everyone sat up and took notice.

“Both spoke to him after the game and told him he is going to play a higher level of cricket. The performance caught the attention of the Kerala senior selectors and from there on they have had plans for him,” said Dinesh. The selectors started promoting Enaan and made him play with the senior team in a T20 tournament in Puducherry.

Last season, Enaan inspired the Kerala U-19 team to qualify for the second stage of the Cooch Behar Trophy tournament, taking 24 wickets and scored more than 200 runs. His all-round match-winning against Rajasthan (5/32 and 83*) earned him a place in the U-19 camp at the National Cricket Academy, Bengaluru.

Enaan’s coach says: “We can find many bowlers delivering quicker balls but they are not able to impart much revolutions for rotation and drift. Then there are many bowlers who have flighted deliveries with rotation and turn. This boy has a combination of both, he has the potential to bowl quicker with drift and a lot of rotations. It gets him a lot of wickets.”

India and Australia U-19 teams will play three 50-over games (Sept 21, 23, 26) and two 4-day games (Sept 30-Oct 2, Oct 7-9).

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