Who is Noor Ahmad, the Afghan spinner who took 3 wickets against Mumbai Indians in IPL 2023?

The biggest highlight of last night’s IPL game between Gujarat Titans (GT) and Mumbai Indians (MI) turned out to be the 18-year old Afghan left-arm wrist spinner Noor Ahmad. Noor surprised everyone by dismissing Cameron Green and Tim David in the 10th over of the match. In his next spell, he caught and bowled Suryakumar Yadav, thereby completely breaking the middle order of MI.

Mumbai Indians were chasing the target of 207, but the team crumbled at 152, all thanks to Noor Ahmed, who changed the game in 2 overs by taking crucial wickets of Green, Tim David and Yadav.

This was only the second match for Noor Ahmed at IPL, the leg-spinner who was acquired by GT at a price of Rs 30 lakh. In 2 matches so far, Noor has taken 6 wickets, and his economy is at 8.13.

Who is Noor Mohammad? Born on January 3, 2005, Noor Ahmed comes from Afghanistan’s Khost province. He was first identified by former Afghanistan captain and National Selector Raees Ahmedzai.

After playing under-19 cricket and proving his mettle there, Noor was selected to play for the national team, and in June 2022, he made his debut against Zimbabwe. Noor amazed everyone in the first match only by taking 4 wickets at Harare.

In November 2023, he played his first ODI against Sri Lanka. He was signed by Gujarat Titans (GT) in November after his good performance at the international level.

Who pushed Noor to pursue cricket? Noor had started playing cricket at the age of four with his brother Ehsan. It was Ehsan only who had spotted Noor’s talent as a spin bowler and pushed him to pursue cricket professionally. 

Though his father wanted Noor to focus more on his studies since he was good at it, Ehsan pursued his father to allow Noor to play cricket as he was sure that he would excel in the game.

Soon, Noor enrolled in a cricket academy near his place and from there his journey began.

A good stint in domestic cricket: Noor did well in domestic cricket as he got 21 wickets in first-class cricket, 16 in List A, and 52 wickets in 53 T20 matches so far. It was after this that he got a call for the Afghanistan national side. 

Who is Noor’s inspiration? Noor considers fellow Afghan cricketer Rashid Khan as his inspiration, and has followed his footsteps to become a wrist spinner.

Rashid is a world-class spinner and is also his teammate at Gujarat Titans. 

What’s next for Noor? Noor’s terrific exploits with the ball has been a good news for Gujarat Titans as the tournament is in its second leg now. The team already has Rashid Khan and now with Noor Ahmed, they have a rock solid spin attack which it can use to restrict any team’s scoring rate.

Leg-spinners have been very successful in this IPL and have been effective against batters even on batting wickets. Be it Piyush Chawla (MI), Varun Chakravarthy (KKR), Sunil Narine (KKR), Ravi Bishnoi (LSG), Rashid Khan (GT) or Noor (GT).

Noor is expected to feature in nearly all the matches for GT now after his good run with the ball. The defending champions will next play KKR on April 29 at the Eden Gardens.