Four balls into his 2024 season, Zaman Akhter turned around to the umpire with both arms raised in appeal. Almost immediately, the finger went up. There was little doubt over the trajectory of the ball, angled in and thumping into Joe Root’s back pad. Less than an over into his first spell, Akhter had the prize wicket of one of England’s greatest Test batters.

After a four-over burst, Akhter was brought back at the end of the first session, and struck again in the first over of his spell. This time he dragged back his length, enticing Harry Brook into a pull shot that saw Yorkshire lose their fourth wicket in the morning session. Those two wickets were the first of five in the innings for Akhter, the first five-wicket haul of his first-class career.

Only a year before that game against Yorkshire, aged 23 and having been driving up and down the country for second team gigs since finishing university, Akhter had been considering throwing in the towel.

“The summer I got signed would have been my last one of giving it [a professional career] a good go,” Akhter tells Wisden.com. “I’d done a couple of summers and then I got injured, and out of contract it’s hard because you’re seeing non-specialists. I had two scans that were clear and I was still in so much pain, I didn’t know what to do from there. I didn’t have a back-up plan straightaway but I was always going to give that year a full crack.”

Akhter only started to consider making a living playing the game whilst at university, his primary sport having been hockey through his teenage years. Playing for the MCCU, alongside those already on or on the brink of county books, he realised he could hold his own. But, having not come through the traditional pathway route, his options were limited.

“I was texting friends in the game for email addresses for second team coaches,” Akhter says. “A lot of the time you just got ignored and never heard back.”

After impressing at an open trial for Warwickshire, Akhter trained at Edgbaston through the 2022/23 winter, but was at a loose end in early 2023 when his stint in Birmingham ended. It was then he got a call from Tom Brown, director of the South Asian Cricket Academy. Having been on SACA’s radar previously, trialling and playing for county second XIs had always got in the way of joining the programme full-time.

“Brownie called me and said, ‘Do you want to do a full-time programme in Birmingham? Train every day, you’ll have an S&C, you’ve got your nutrition, everything’. So I said, yeah.

“I was living with five other guys on the programme in a house - out of that house, three were signed. The talent was amazing to see, it was just whether people took a punt.”

Since its foundation in 2021, 10 SACA graduates have been awarded professional contracts, with Jafer Chohan the first of them included in an England squad this winter. While 10 players added to the hundreds on county books across the country seems like a drop in the ocean, it’s significant when considering the starting point.

In 2018, an ECB report revealed that only four per cent of professional players in England came from a South Asian background. The research Brown did for his PhD before starting SACA revealed that white British privately-educated male players were 34 times more likely to play professional cricket than state-educated male South Asians.

For those players floating around the edges of a seemingly impenetrable system, the approach SACA takes is instrumental in getting them in the door.

“You can see the talent that’s in there, it’s just how they can get into the game,” says Akhter. “Brownie does so well just sending endless messages to counties, and he gets messages being like ‘I need a left-arm spinner’, for example, and he’s got loads to choose from. I think there was a day when SACA fielded two teams on the same day because they’ve got so many players willing and good enough to play second team cricket. His [Brown’s] strength is just not taking no for an answer.”

After years on the second XI grind, it took Akhter just two months in the SACA programme to find a professional contract.

“The week I got signed, I was in Bristol that day with Gloucestershire, and then I was meant to be going to Worcestershire, Kent, Sussex and Essex in the next consecutive days just to go and bowl,” he says. “It was a bit surreal when Steve Snell [then performance director at Gloucestershire], I told him what I was doing for the next few days and he said ‘I don’t want you going anywhere’. In that moment in my head I was like, 'Does that mean I’m getting signed?' Then he offered me a one-year deal. It was a massive relief and I was buzzing because after those three years of all that work, finally I got the prize.”

The speed at which Akhter found a professional deal after joining SACA is poignant. Aged 23 and having suffered with back injuries in his earlier years, he suddenly had access to the resources he needed to succeed. As with other graduates, years spent grinding out their skill, constantly aware that the next trial could be the one, means the academy is producing players ready for professional cricket immediately.

“We’re still on a WhatsApp group with Brownie,” says Akhter. “Every time someone does well there are always good words spoken, and seeing these lads who were all in the same room in Bradford two years ago on the coldest day in December, all seven of us got contracts out of that room and went on to do great things. Zen Malik at Warwickshire was another big one. I just never understood why he never got signed. He was getting hundred after hundred every week. There’ll be many more to come, especially seeing the talent pool at the minute.”

England Lions have announced a 12-member squad for their tour game against Sri Lanka.

Gloucestershire's Zaman Akhter received his first Lions call-up.

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— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) August 9, 2024

After breaking into the Gloucestershire first XI at the end of 2023 and continuing into 2024, Akhter’s rapid rise continued with a call-up to England Lions in August. He found immediate success yet again, taking a five-for on the first morning of the tour match against Sri Lanka, his victims including Dimuth Karunaratne and Kusal Mendis.

From that XI, Josh Hull was selected to make his England debut weeks later at The Oval. The group that will travel to South Africa next week for a development camp and four-day game includes three quicks who have been part of recent senior England squads. With England’s open approach to fast-bowler selection, focussing on ball speed and potential above all else, Akhter’s attributes put him among the understudy crop.

Part of the focus is the coaching staff overseeing the group. Andrew Flintoff will take on his first tour as Lions head coach in South Africa, while Dale Steyn is also part of the coaching lineup. For an up and coming pacer who grew up in the late 2000s, it’s some prospect.

“These are people I used to watch as a kid and try to bowl and play a bit like them,” says Akhter. “To actually have them coaching you, it’s a bit surreal. I met Freddie for the first time at lunch the other day, he was exactly as I expected - I was laughing the whole time. I just kept giggling to be honest because it was such a weird experience, I couldn’t believe it was really happening.”

In less than two years, Akhter has gone from dwindling options to play for second XIs, to training in an England development squad under two of the best cricketers of a generation. It’s not only the story of a promising talent being realised, but also of how close he came to falling through the cracks.

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