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From UAE prodigy to starring for England, Mahika's meteoric rise

England-born Mahika Gaur was only 12 when she made her debut for UAE women's cricket team. Now she is the key pace bowler in England team

Chaya Mughal was taken aback when the former captain of the UAE women’s cricket team saw a kid bowl with rare aggression in Dubai’s ICC Cricket Academy.

Mahika Gaur was that kid who just wanted to bowl fast, pitching the ball hard and asking batters some serious questions in that net session.

Mughal, a former India domestic player who has become the Women’s Cricket Development Officer in the Emirates Cricket Board following her retirement, had seen quite a lot of cricketers in her life.

But she had rarely seen someone so young trying to bowl so fast.

Eventually, that young girl was fast-tracked into the UAE senior team as she made her international debut on January 19, 2019 — less than two months before her 13th birthday.

But the tall left-arm pacer’s ability to bowl fast soon caught the attention of the national selectors of England, the country of her birth.

Last year, after playing 19 T20Is for the UAE, Mahika made the headlines when England picked her for a bilateral series against Sri Lanka.

The six-foot-four pacer was on track to lead the England attack in the 2024 T20 World Cup in the UAE where she had started her international career at 12.

But a side strain kept the 18-year-old out of the game, which nevertheless allowed her to complete the school exam in England.

The injury may have robbed her of a chance to make World Cup debut, but Mahika is back in Dubai where her parents still live.

No, she is not in town to spend time with her family.

The England cricket board brought her to the UAE to train alongside their World Cup team, who are hoping to break the stranglehold of their old enemy Australia in the global showpiece.

In an interview with Khaleej Times, the soft-spoken and mild-mannered Mahika opened up about why she loves to terrorise batters with her pace and the role played by the UAE in her growth as a cricketer.

Q. You must be disappointed at missing out on the World Cup due to that injury…

I was definitely upset about it, but I also understood it completely because I hadn’t really played much this summer and the fact that they still took me to Ireland (for a T20I game) and I still got to play over there was great for me and now I am here training with the team.

Q. How excited were you when you earned your first England call-up last year?

I was obviously very excited because I had been in Dubai for eight years and then the first year after I moved back to England, I got into The Hundred, which was really nice. I didn’t play, but I was part of the team (Manchester Original). Then last year, it all happened very fast, because I got to play in The Hundred, then on the last day of the tournament, I got a phone call from the England coach (Jon Lewis) to say that they wanted me for the Sri Lanka series (in August 2023). It was amazing because it was always my goal to play for England, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon after moving back to England from Dubai. So, I was just very happy.

Q. You have played seven matches now for England, five T20Is and two ODIs, having played 19 T20 Internationals for the UAE which is an associate member of the ICC. So being part of an elite team like England, has anything changed in your life?

I think the biggest change for me was to see how professional the environment was. England is one of the best teams in women’s cricket. So to see how hard everyone trains was amazing because I feel like coming from an associate team where it is different. Not everyone is a full-time cricketer, not everyone is completely committed to that (cricket) because they need to have a job as well. So I had never seen full-time professional athletes, how they train, how they go about what they do. So I think that was the biggest change for me to see that.

Q. So tell us how did fast bowling attract you? Batters normally don’t like facing fast bowlers and it’s not easy to be a fast bowler either because it’s physically so demanding…

My dad was a left-arm fast bowler (in his college days in India), so it was that skill he taught me when I was younger. He wasn’t amazingly successful, but I just learned by watching him bowl. He would never come to me and say that this is how you spin the ball. He always wanted to teach me how to bowl fast. Then I think watching cricket from a young age, I always found the fast bowlers exciting. And obviously my height gives me a great advantage.

Q. Who are your fast-bowling heroes, other than your dad, of course?

I loved watching Mitchell Starc bowl because obviously, he is a tall left-arm fast bowler. Then I think in England it's Jimmy Anderson, the way he maintained his fitness for so many years. I think that was amazing. He is a big inspiration. I can’t say that there has been one role model. There have been many throughout my life from who I would love to draw inspiration. Even when I was younger, my mum was a huge fan of (MS) Dhoni so we would always support Chennai in the IPL. Just loved the way he was always so calm. In women’s cricket Sarah Taylor was a big inspiration and training under her was a bit like a fan girl moment.

Q. You are not a fan girl now, you are probably the brightest young talent in England. But your journey started in the UAE, where you made your debut remarkably at just 12. Obviously, the cricket system in the UAE must be doing something really good to be able to produce and nurture a talented youngster like you…

A lot of credit has to go to the UAE. It was only after coming to Dubai that I joined an academy, and I started to take cricket a bit more seriously. I think over here, I have seen how this game has grown, I was only here for eight years before I moved back to England, But in that time, the game grew so much. If I had made my senior debut at 12, that means I already had the experience of going on an international tour. I remember my first tour with the UAE team was to Thailand. So I was just 12 and going to another country to play cricket without my parents with me, experiencing what it could be like at the international level, I think that prepared me for England. All those tours that we had, we had some in Malaysia, a couple in Thailand, so I think just going on those tours prepared me quite well. I think the opportunities I got over here played a key role in me playing for England.

Q. Which school did you attend in Dubai?

Dubai College, it was amazing. That time they never had any girls playing cricket. So I played with the boys. The coach was nice, he would always include me with the boys, he would not really treat me any differently, he always helped me improve. So a lot of credit also goes to my school in Dubai.

Q. We know a lot of the players in the UAE women's team also played against boys in age-group cricket….

Yes, when we were growing up, there were not enough girls who played cricket to build a team of eleven players. So it was very normal to join a boys’ team even in England. When I played just a year before moving to Dubai, it would be with the boys, they didn’t have a girls’ team. So it was not like anything crazy. I went to different academies in Dubai where I always trained with the boys, had sessions with them, and played matches with them. So that was quite normal, and that helped a lot. The standard of the girls was not good enough at that time, now it’s obviously so much better. But at that time, it was not good enough. So playing with the boys definitely made all of us better.

Q. Now that you live in England, is there anything about Dubai that you miss?

My parents still live here, so it’s quite hard living away from them. So I miss them in England, I miss the home-cooked food and stuff like that. I miss the heat especially in England when it’s so cold in the winter and it’s dark at 4 pm. I miss that beautiful Dubai weather during that time. So I come here as much as I can, especially during the big holidays like Christmas.

Q. You spoke about Anderson and Starc, two amazing pace bowlers in men’s cricket. Do you also have the ambition to become as big as them in international cricket?

For me, the main priority is now to keep improving and getting better. I just want to become as good an athlete and as good a cricketer as I can be. I want to be a good bowler for England in years to come.

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