When batting for Eckington Cricket Club as the club’s overseas professional, Sami Sohail has often been asked where he is from.
“I say, ‘I’m from Malawi’,” Sohail recalls. “They were like ‘where is Malawi’? I said ‘in Africa’. They were like ‘ah somewhere in South Africa.’ I said ‘no, Malawi is a different country.’
“Whoever you tell you come from Malawi they’re like, is it South Africa?’ Players don’t even know where Malawi is. That really annoys me because we’re an international team.”
For all the geographical ignorance of opponents in the Derbyshire League, their surprise at encountering a Malawian opponent is understandable. Sohail, who is 21, might well be the first Malawi cricketer ever recruited to be an overseas professional in English club cricket. To understand why, just glance at the records for the top Twenty20 international averages. Just above Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan and India’s superstar Virat Kohli is Sohail: in 26 matches, he has an average of 72.50 for Malawi.
“It’s a privilege and an honour to be amongst the top in the world,” Sohail says. “People are looking at the stats – there’s someone from Malawi who has done this.”
These deeds helped Sohail to become one of club cricket’s unlikeliest overseas players. Last year, Sohail visited family in the USA, timing his trip to coincide with trials for Minor League Cricket. He was selected for the Chicago Tigers in the competition, where he impressed some South African professionals, who then recommended him to an agent.
“He told me that it’s very surprising a club approaching a player from Malawi,” Sohail recalls. “They have opportunities to get players from all over the world. Choosing a play from Malawi is a great thing for the nation.
“I’m so grateful for this opportunity. I really want other Malawians to follow this trend and I hope I’m motivating them – if you work hard and believe in yourself, all of us can get overseas contracts and represent our country.”
And so Sohail has spent the summer playing and coaching in the village of Eckington while living at the club chairman’s house 10 miles north, in Sheffield. “You’d not really see in club cricket a player from Malawi,” says Nathan Musselwhite, Eckington’s first-team captain. “All that mattered to me was the kind of person Sami was. From the conversations we had he was a great guy and wanted to come over to do his best for the team. He stood out with his love for the game and general positivity – as soon as I spoke to him over the phone, I thought he was our man.”
If Sohail hasn’t quite emulated his stellar T20 international record, he has enjoyed a fine season for Eckington in 50-over cricket. Batting in the middle order, Sohail averages 35 in his 21 games; he has also taken 24 wickets at an average of 24 with his medium-pace bowling. “I haven’t played on these kind of wickets so far in my career,” Sohail reflects. “It’s tricky as a batsman because it’s moving around both ways.”
While he inherited a love of the game from his parents, who hail from Pakistan, Sohail is emphatically a product of Malawi cricket. He moved to Lilongwe, the capital, aged three when his parents set up a grocery shop and restaurant there. Sohail learned to play the game with family and friends, especially the country’s South Asian community, at a private school in the city.
“It all started at school with friends who were interested in cricket,” he recalls, “Pretty much every day after school we used to hang out at the local club and play cricket: tennis ball, hardball, whatever.”
Sohail honed his game playing for clubs in Malawi. His performances led to him having trials with the national team and then making his Malawi debut aged 16.
From 2019, full international status was extended to all T20 matches between nations, giving greater profile to the feats of Associate players. “That was just motivation for us,” Sohail says. “We want to see Cricket Malawi on the cricketing map.”
With interest in the sport developing in Malawi, Sohail earns a living from his cricket academy in Lilongwe; in between matches in Derbyshire, he is doing his ECB level two coaching course. “More schools are introducing cricket,” he says. “I’ve been getting lots of youngsters, who are interested in making a career in cricket.”
Sohail’s ultimate dream is to help Malawi make it to the world stage: “in a few years we could be playing the T20 World Cup”. Regional qualification tournaments as well as the Africa Cup T20 – a new competition launched by the Africa Cricket Association and Corcom Media Ventures – reflect the growth in live streaming of Associate cricket and have allowed Sohail to build his remarkable international record.
For all the importance of these new competitions, the English league system has also played a crucial historic role in developing players from emerging nations. But Sohail embodies clubs’ growing openness to players from beyond traditional markets.
“Attitudes are changing,” explains Rob Humphries, an agent for WSX Cricket. “We always get asked a lot for Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans – the culture fit tends to be easier, generally speaking. But after the success of Afghans recently, clubs have become more open. If you recruit the guy with the big first-class record overseas it doesn’t mean they’re going to perform. More visibility for Associate cricket – you’ve got access to the highlights and the stats and so on – really helps. And if you’re looking for an Associate player, why not go for the man with the highest T20 average in the world?”
With one game of the season left, Sohail’s focus is on helping Eckington secure the win that they need to escape relegation. But he is determined that it will not be his last stint as an overseas professional in England. “I’d love to come back,” he says. “I hope I’m the first of many to come here to represent Malawi.”
