Midas touch for Award Winning under 19 International Cricketer
By Emb Hashmi
Shozair Abbas Ali a young ambitious school leaver from Basall Heath, never dreamt that he would one day be an award winning cricketer inspirational teenager or even be picked to play international cricket for England in the under 19 squad.
Shozair cannot believe his luck, for someone who was not very interested in cricket until he was in year 7 at school, and preferred football over cricket he believes strongly that the support from his community his family and his teacher gave him the opportunity, the ambition and the support to focus on cricket and encouragement required to not just reach for the stars but one day be one.
Shozair believes his love for sport came from his family, he said “Dad played cricket, I was a football man, during school year 7 I started to play cricket for fun, and at age of 14 I really thought this was a good sport”. Shozair went on to say “ My family are very proud especially my mum and dad, and my granddad, dad goes to every match, and my granddad was arm wrestling champion in Pakistan and really wanted someone in the family to pursue sport”.
Shozair really puts his success down to a handful of people first and foremost his family and then his school P.E teacher Mr Rob White, and Zohor Malik a local community leader, both of them put Shozair forward for the Warwickshire under 15’s squad trails at Edgbaston and at the same time Shozair applied to play for his local team at the park called Azad Sport based at Basal Heath Park.
Shozair’s luck really started at the tender age of 14 when he was picked after trialling for Warwickshire from 30 potential hopefuls, Shozair was one of the 15 lucky enough to be put through to play in tournaments for the county. Shozair did extremely well playing for his county that he won a place at the Warwickshire cricket academy one of only 4 boys to receive this honour. Shozair was then one of only two young cricketers’ from Warwickshire that also played for the Midlands
Shozair had an extremely good year being part of a winning team, this winning streak determined who went through to play for England under 14s and Shozair scored highly once again and won best bowler award for England.
Shozair went on to then win Warwickshire under 15 player of the year award, and then secured his place as part of England under 19 squad and is representing his country in international tournaments, he has to date played In Australia, South Africa and Bangladesh.
After all the bad media British sport has had over the past year with documentaries highlighting racism and prejudice in sport, Shozair, said he has experienced no prejudice and received only support from his team and feels proud to represent England on a national and international level.
Shozair Favourite cricketer is the Australian Brett Lee, because he believes him to be a complete athlete and inspires every young fast bowler.
Shozair advice to budding young cricketer is, “work hard be determined and want to be the best, I always push myself and be better then everyone else”.
Shoziar is passing on his talent by coaching young hopefuls, and is coaching a cricket team at Queenbridge school, which has gone on and won competitions.
Shoziar would like to be playing international and county cricket in the next five years and would always stay loyal to England even if at first he does not make the international team he said he will never give up and keep trying, he said his parents are originally from Pakistan so he has strong ties with the country but he would never play for Pakistan as he feels England is priority
Shozair final words for any budding sports star is;
“Work hard, show good character”, I train hard during the winter nearly everyday every day, and have to stick to a special diet and cut down on Asian food, for healthy options”.
