The Roebucks

I first played against Yasir in Denmark in July 1999, when he toured with Pakistan’s Emerging Players side — a skinny seventeen-year-old with a beautiful action and serious pace. Years later I came up against him at Sussex, promptly hijacked him, and talked our captain Rob Key into signing him for Kent. Best bit of transfer business I never got paid for. Kent together. Bromley together. And still now, the Roebucks together, where he was last season’s leading batsman. Some people never stop. But Yasir deserved far more from Pakistan. Three Tests. A five-for and a fifty on debut in Bangalore. Two hundred first-class games and the leading wicket-taker in the history of English domestic T20 — a man who bowled 150kph and reversed it. Watch the current lot pushing 130 and tell me that’s right. And politics is a big part of why. In Pakistan it never stays outside the boundary — it decides who gets picked, who gets the phone call, and who gets quietly forgotten. Yasir’s father named his elder brother after Imran Khan; that’s what the man meant to them. Imran now sits in Adiala, three years in, most convictions suspended or overturned, taken to hospital after midnight this month and driven back to his cell by five in the morning. I’ve always believed he should be released, and I’ll keep saying it. A word on that father of his, Idrees Satti. He had Yasir out in the sun from the age of seven and never once stopped believing in him, through every season the system overlooked his boy. I love that man dearly — one of the finest I’ve known in this game — and if you’ve ever wondered where Yasir’s decency and toughness come from, you only have to spend ten minutes with his dad. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Which is why it matters that the honour came at Lord’s, not Lahore. Where they judge you on the cricket. As a Dane, an Englishman, and a Pakistani by blood, I’m immensely proud to call him my friend. Enjoy every second of it, Yas. 🇵🇰🏏