South West Region’s Salman Ahmad presents selection enigma for Team usa u-19



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South West Region’s Salman Ahmad presents selection enigma for Team USA U-19
By Peter Della Penna
As USA’s U-19 players prepare for the 2010 ICC U-19 World Cup next January, the squad still has some areas it needs to improve upon before embarking on their trip to New Zealand. Near the top of the list, they are looking for better results in the fast bowling department.
While Team USA succeeded in two qualifying rounds in Canada with a plethora of spinners, conditions in New Zealand are expected to favor pace bowling. One player hoping to provide Team USA success opening with the ball in his hand is Salman Ahmad.
“If he’s selected for New Zealand, I don’t know what the selectors will do, but I have been to New Zealand and those conditions will suit his type of bowling,” said Mumtaz Yusuf, a former national team coach for both Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Yusuf has worked with Ahmad as the head coach of La Mirada Cricket Academy and Citrus Valley Cricket Academy. “It will not be like Canada where the wickets are bad and they take on spin. The wickets they are going to play in New Zealand, it will seam a lot.”
The question remains, as Yusuf points out, if he is selected.

At a time when the worldwide cricket community laments the fact that there are hardly any cricketers representing the United States that were born and raised in the country, Ahmad gives them a reason to think differently. Salman Rashid Ahmad was born on May 10, 1992 in Artesia, Calif., and has spent his entire life growing up in the sunny suburbs of Los Angeles. Ahmad played basketball, tennis and soccer as a kid. It wasn’t until he started watching the 1999 and 2003 World Cup matches at home with his father that his interest in cricket was piqued.


“I remember starting off taking catches with a tennis ball inside the house,” said Ahmad. “We had a really small wooden bat.”
In 2005, Asif and Nina Ahmad, Salman’s parents, founded La Mirada Cricket Academy, which has since been renamed Citrus Valley Cricket Academy and now has its own ground in Fontana, Calif. Most of the kids who were beginning in the academy didn’t really understand a whole lot about cricket, but the enthusiasm was there and for 12-year-old Salman, the hunger to work hard and learn was extremely visible.
“Salman is a good learner,” said Yusuf. “He’s a guy who will pick your brain. He keeps picking my brain. He’s a guy I used to work on drills with him. He goes back and works on it like homework and I know a lot of kids don’t do that.”
After absorbing as much as he could under the tutelage of Yusuf, Ahmad began showing promising signs of development.
“When he started playing Under-15, that’s the time when we noticed he was getting really good,” said Asif Ahmad. “One time he took seven wickets against Northern California in a game and that’s when his bowling started getting really good. After that, he started playing with the adults.”
Ahmad started to captain at the age of 14 for the Citrus Valley CC team entered into the Southern California Cricket Association. Two years later, he managed to be selected for the Central East Region at the 2008 U-19 National Tournament in Florida in somewhat bizarre circumstances.
The Ahmad family was in Chicago for a U-15 tournament where younger brother Shakeel was competing. Salman was practicing his bowling in the nets against some adults when Akhtar Masood “Chik” Syed, the Central East Region’s representative on the USACA Board of Directors, spotted him and noticed his abilities. When he found out that Ahmad wasn’t playing for South West, he invited him to play for the Central East U-19 team. Ahmad made quite a difference for the Central East U-19 squad in 2008. The team went all the way to the final before it lost to New York.
“Salman was huge for us,” said Abhijit Joshi, captain of the Central East U-19 team and Ahmad’s current teammate on the USA U-19 squad. “I could always count on 10 overs from Salman, 10 from Talha [Zamir], and 10 from myself. We struggled without him this year.”
After establishing himself on the U-19 circuit by helping to lead Central East to the final in 2008, Ahmad opted to play for his home region, South West, in the 2009 U-19 National Tournament in Brooklyn, N.Y. He took nine wickets and scored two half-centuries, one as an opener and the second coming in at number three, in three matches for the South West team. His performances earned him recognition as a First-Team All-American and a spot on the USA U-19 squad that went to Canada in July to compete in the ICC Americas U-19 Regional Qualifier. Ahmad believes a large amount of credit for achieving selection for the USA U-19 squad goes to his dad, who introduced him to the game, and especially to Yusuf.
“He’s the person who really taught me the skills and technique for cricket and the mindset behind the game,” said Ahmad. “I met him just a year or two after learning of the game. So he’s been with me the whole time from when I first didn’t even know how to hold a bat to now where I’m playing on this team.”

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For those who followed the USA U-19 squad’s qualifying journey in Canada to the 2010 ICC U-19 World Cup, the elephant in the room during the Global Qualifier in Toronto this past September was the continued non-selection of Ahmad. After playing in all five of Team USA’s matches during the Americas Qualifier in July, the 17-year-old was left on the sidelines for all but the final match against Hong Kong.
While he didn’t exactly knock the door down in July, with five wickets at 19.20 in 22.4 overs, he didn’t embarrass himself either. Against Hong Kong, Ahmad bowled well and induced several edges, winding up unlucky not to take any wickets. His seven overs went for 23 runs. Crucially, he displayed a calm demeanor coming in at number eleven in a pressure packed situation to help USA beat Hong Kong by one wicket.
Despite playing in just the one match in September, Ahmad showed great maturity by remaining positive and supporting his teammates throughout the two-week tournament. He was extremely visible in his efforts to stay involved in matches and kept people’s spirits up when situations were looking bad.
Currently a senior at Brea-Olinda High School, Ahmad is hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father and study to be a doctor, although he isn’t quite sure which one of the many California universities he’d like to attend next year. For now though, he is enjoying his time playing cricket for Team USA and for Citrus Valley, where he finished first in Division Five of SCCA with 617 runs, including five half-centuries, and third with 35 wickets in 16 matches while leading Citrus Valley to a first-place finish in the division.
USA’s U-19 players will be traveling to Florida for a training camp from Nov. 13-15. Several players who were not part of the squad in Canada have been invited to participate in an effort to keep the atmosphere competitive and give the selectors a chance to look at more options before a final squad of 15 is picked for New Zealand.
Regardless of whether or not Ahmad makes the cut, he is still a valuable player for the future and proof that cricketers can be developed in America from a young age. He is one of four players on the current squad that will be eligible for the 2012 ICC U-19 World Cup scheduled to take place in Canada. Along with Ahmad and Joshi, Greg Sewdial and Hammad Shahid should form the nucleus of USA’s next campaign two years from now. However, Yusuf believes it would be wise to include him for the final leg of Team USA’s journey that began in July.
“He is a very effective bowler,” said Yusuf, “and he will be very effective if he is picked to go to New Zealand because of those wickets.”
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