South Asian Cricket Academy wastes little time showing why it was needed

Kashif Ali learned how to bat from Mohammad Yousuf and Joe Root. There were no coaches around when he and his friends played tapeball cricket, so he watched his favourite players on YouTube, and tried to imitate them. When he was 12, his family moved from Kashmir to Luton, and three years later he played his first hardball game. By the time he was 24 he had played in the 2nd XIs of six different first-class counties – without ever making it further.

Two weeks ago, Kashif finally made his first-class debut, for Worcestershire. Their County Championship match against Derbyshire was a low-scoring affair where the seamers ran rampant, and only four complete overs had been bowled when Kashif was hurried in at No 5, his team 23 for three. He put on almost a century stand for the fourth wicket with Jack Haynes, and top-scored in the innings with 52. “I didn’t think too much about it,” he says. “I just went in, played my shots, and backed myself.” The next day, Worcestershire signed him on a two-year deal. “It’s what I’ve wanted for quite a few years now, so that felt really good.”

For some – including Kashif himself – the moral of this story is that if you keep faith in yourself, dreams can come true. But there is another lesson too. Kashif is one of the first graduates of the South Asian Cricket Academy, an “intervention programme” launched this year to help British Asians overcome the systemic inequalities and invisible biases that keep them out of the professional game. Kashif had been pinging around cricket’s development system for years without finding a county. It has taken the Academy less than half a season to secure him a contract.

The Academy was born out of a conversation between Kabir Ali, the former England