The Mumbai Indians spinner had a mesmerizing debut season in the T20 Blast 2025, representing Derbyshire.
The 19-year-old Afghanistan prodigy, Allah Ghazanfar, has already made a wave with his astonishing performances in international cricket. The Mumbai Indians (MI) spinner also had a mesmerizing debut season in the T20 Blast 2025. Playing for the Derbyshire County Cricket Club, he has scalped 16 wickets in 14 matches at an impressive economy of 7.05. However, it has been recently revealed that Indian spinner Sai Kishore had sought out the Afghan youngster during last year’s ACC Emerging Asia Cup.
During the eight-team tournament that took place in Oman in October 2024, the Gujarat Titans (GT) player sought out Ghazanfar to get some insights on the variations that the 19-year-old has up his sleeves. While praising his skills with the new ball in the powerplay, Kishore also spoke about the spinner’s in-drift, which makes it even more difficult for the batters to face Gahazanfar’s deliveries.
“I wanted to know how he got his carrom ball, which is very good. He can deceive the batsman in the air with that in-drift he gets, making the ball move in. And that is possible because his deliveries have a lot of backspin on it and also because of his release,” stated Kishore to ESPN Cricinfo.
Notably, Afghanistan A had defeated India A by 20 runs in the second semi-final of the Emerging Asia Cup 2024. Ghazanfar had dismissed both of the Indian openers, Prabhsimran Singh (19) and Abhishek Sharma (7), while conceding just 14 runs in three overs of that knockout clash.
Eventually, the Afghans went on to win the tournament with a seven-wicket victory over Sri Lanka A in the Final. The spinner once again produced a clinical show as he completed his four-over quota at a miraculous economy rate of 3.50 and also snared two crucial wickets.
The prodigy had replaced his fellow Afghanistan spinner, Mujib Ur Rahman, at the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) camp in 2024 after the latter’s injury. Though Ghazanfar could not make his Indian Premier League (IPL) debut for the franchise during their title-winning season in IPL 2024, the learnings that he gained from the likes of Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy helped the player in his coming contests.
The spinner discussed how he approached the Afghanistan A captain, Darwish Rasooli, to hand him the ball during the semi-final clash against Tilak Varma and Co. Despite the pace-favoured track at the Al Amerat Cricket Ground, it was aforementioned how the pivotal efforts of Ghazanfar powered his team to advance to the summit clash by edging out India A.
“I want to confront challenges. The wicket was seamer-friendly and the coaches were not sure if I could be effective. But I told the captain, ‘Give me the ball.’ I had learned and seen how to control a pressure situation during the IPL [2024] final. That came in handy,” revealed the Afghan youngster.
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