THE JOURNEY OF HARRIS RAUF

 

It was a summer evening and all the school-going boys were enjoying their holidays by playing cricket in the neighbourhood. It was Rauf’s turn to bowl; he was famous because of his fast bowling. All the other kids were afraid of him because he used to bowl so fast that the other kids couldn’t even see the ball coming and only see it when it used to hit the bails. One day, when all the friends were grown up, they were playing at a university. The boys from another section came to play with them and started arguing with Rauf, he didn’t argue back but what he did was shocking. He bowled a very fast bouncer which hit one of the boy’s heads and the one who was hit with his bouncer, couldn’t play anymore and was forced onto the ground because of the hard hit. The day passed and Rauf became very famous. The university management called a fast-bowling legend, Shoaib Akhtar, who was famous for injuring players with bouncers. He watched Rauf for two to three days and then met him with a hard ball in his hand. Harris Rauf was shocked that Shoaib asked him to bowl some rocket shots in front of him. He did what he was known for and Shoaib got really impressed and sent him to the trials at the Pakistan cricket board where he got selected. Rauf’s parents were very proud of him. Harris worked in a shop to pay his university fees and when he went for the trial, the shopkeeper fired him, but he didn’t care because playing cricket would benefit him more. As always, hard work pays off. He participated in smaller leagues and got selected for the World Cup. When he entered the ground to play, he could hear the crowd cheering. “Harris! Harris! Harris!” and the commentators on the mic announced, “Here is the man who worked years to play for this team and not to forget Shoaib sent him into this team because of his rockets.” When he was going to bowl his first ball of the World Cup, the commentators on the mic said, “He is running, crosses, the umpire takes the jump, fires a rocket speedball, and oh my God! The bai... bails are lightened, Rauf gets Kohli out on the first ball! He is on absolute fire”... and the rest is history. This was the story of Harris Rauf which gives us the moral: hard work pays off.

 Ali Mohsin VIII Blue