XtraTime Web Desk: Sunrisers Hyderabad’s young rookie Abdul Samad is already catching the attention of everyone. The stockily built all rounder from Jammu & Kashmir displayed a steely nerve on Friday night as he was asked to bowl the death over against Chennai Super Kings. Samad, despite giving a boundary off a wide in his first ball, restricted MS Dhoni & Sam Curran to settle for only 20 runs. David Warner’s SRH eventually won the match by 7 runs.
A fearless hitter and a good finisher, Abdul Samad has been brilliant so far in the 2020 edition of the Indian Premier League. The 18 year old cricketer from Rajouri was picked by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in IPL auction 2020 for INR 20 lakhs. In his debut IPL match, the youngster scored not out 12 off 7 balls including 1 four and 1 six at a strike-rate of 171.43 as Sunrisers registered their first win by 15 runs. In the match against CSK, Samad scored 8 runs off 6 balls along with bowling decent leg spin. He gave 41 runs in his four overs in which he took the wicket of Kedar Jadhav. Out of those 41 runs 20 were scored off his last over.
Former India all rounder Irfan Pathan has been credited of spotting Samad. Irfan during his stint as the coach of Jammu & Kashmir Ranji Trophy team, spotted the talented all rounder during a camp. Praising his brother’s knack of spotting a talent like Abdul Samad, Yusuf Pathan took to twitter. The elder of the Pathan brothers even shared that Irfan can be a good scout spotting young talents for IPL teams.
“A great find Irfan. Abdul Samad is off to a proper start with both bat and ball, a lot of potential in him. Tu toh acha scout ban sakte hai IPL teams ke liye @IrfanPathan,” Yusuf tweeted
Reacting to this, Irfan added that he has been unofficially essaying the role of a scout for the teams, “Haha lala mere unoffcial scout to already hoo;)”
It goes to be seen if Abdul Samad can carry on his impressive start to his IPL career.