Pakistan v England: Rehan Ahmed makes a promising debut in Karachi

Rehan Ahmed is younger than Facebook, Strictly Come Dancing and professional T20 cricket.

In cricketing terms, leg-spinner Ahmed has always done things in a hurry.

He was bowling googles, flippers and sliders before the age of 10. At 11, he dismissed former and current England captains Alastair Cook and Ben Stokes in the nets at Lord’s. A year later, he impressed the late, great Shane Warne.

Now, at 18 years and 126 days, he has played Test cricket at the youngest age to pull on an England shirt. You have to go back to 1899 to find an England player with fewer than Ahmed’s three first-class matches on Test debut.

Someone used to moving at a fast pace in life, Ahmed actually found his feet in Test cricket by slowing down.

Understandably, his first spell on the first day of the third Test against Pakistan in Karachi was nervy.

Looking a bit busy, his five overs in the morning session cost 37 runs. Leg-spinning is the most difficult art in cricket at the best of times, let alone when you’re just four months into adulthood and bowling to Babar Azam and Azhar Ali, two of the greatest Pakistanis ever to pull back the blade.

Back after lunch, Ahmed was relaxed and ready to rip.

He was hitting catches from right hand to left, shrugging off the shoulders of his shirt as if he had to borrow it from a bigger boy. He took two steps and then climbed onto the crease and unleashed flat foot chops and devilish googles.

With a googly, Ahmed trapped Saud Shakeel for the first Test wicket. As left-hander Shakeel fumbled the away ball, the next ball, a leg break, spun back in, took an inside edge and was caught off the pad at short leg by diver Ollie Pope. Ahmed was bullied.

Not the tallest, Ahmed grew in size. He was the bowler when Babar ran out and Ahmed’s googly tormented Faheem Ashraf, who was playing the wrong line for now and found himself in Bakerloo when he should have been in the Circle.

Ahmed beat England’s number one spinner Jack Leach for a long time, but Leach took the last three wickets to finish on 4-140 – a seasoned old pro teaching the youngster how to eat a rabbit pie.

Still, Ahmed’s 2-89 made him the youngest leg-spinner to claim two wickets in a Test innings in 17 years.

“This is probably the best day of my life so far,” Ahmed told Test Match Special through an unwavering smile.

“I was very nervous. It was nice to get away from the first over and then settle in slowly.

“As time went on, I felt much more comfortable that it was a good place to be. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Do this or that.’

Ahmed’s day started with receiving his England cap, father Naeem at his side, from former captain Nasser Hussain.

Hussain was the skipper when England last played a Test in Karachi in 2000. They had a leg-spinner then too, although that turned out to be the last time Ian Salisbury played for England.

In the intervening 22 years, England have picked five other leg-spinners before Ahmed – Chris Schofield, Scott Borthwick, Adil Rashid, Mason Crane and Matt Parkinson. Only Rashid has played more than two Tests.

If English cricket has long dreamed of finding its own version of Warne, then the mass distortion prevailing in our country only means that the collective fails in Warney’s flipper.

Luckily for Ahmed, he has a captain in Stokes and a coach in Brendon McCullum whose whole ethos is about taking the pressure off the players. They have made the possibility of failure less scary than Winnie the Pooh after a few gins.

“There’s not too much pressure to perform, just to have fun,” Stokes said. “You only make your debut once, you can never do it again. If we can make him feel like he’s had quite a ball there and he’s walking around and running, that would be great.”

Not that Ahmed is likely to be fazed by the challenge of playing at the highest level. Those who know him speak of his immense confidence, not to mention his insatiable desire to have a bat or a ball in his hand whenever possible.

During The Hundred, Southern Brave coach Mahela Jayawardene ordered Ahmed to take a day off from training. However, Ahmed snuck into the nets.

Rahim Ali, Ahmed’s childhood mentor who now works with him at Leicestershire, told BBC Sport: “We were playing away against Northants. I was in the hotel and around 11 at night I heard balls hitting the bat.

“I knocked on the wall, then I texted to see what room he was in — he was next door. He said he was going to try out his new racket the next day.”

Perhaps the closest thing to dropping Ahmed came after the shutdown in Karachi.

Saqlain Mushtaq, legendary spinner and now coach of Pakistan, spoke about Ahmed.

“It was a very impressive performance,” said Saqlain. “I really liked his control. The most important thing was his confidence. He has a lot of potential. He looks really good for the England team of the future.”

Ahmed listened in the back of the room.

“I didn’t want to hear it, it’s got me a little fired up,” he said.

Ahmed may have to get used to it. This was a very promising start.