Juggling cricket with a toddler in tow

Sana Mir, the former Pakistan captain, believes her good friend and long-time teammate Nain Abidi's world usually operates in two moods - confident and overconfident. Much of that was tested in April 2021.

Nearly two years after giving birth to her son Abbas, an event that had forced her into premature retirement, Abidi sensed an opportunity to make a comeback to international cricket - if not for Pakistan then at least the USA, where she had moved with her husband Asad.

So, the brief 13-day trip back to Pakistan held two motives for her. One, to celebrate the birthday of her son with family and friends, which wasn't possible in the previous year due to the COVID-19 outbreak. And secondly, to train and be ready for the camp that was scheduled to be held in Dallas later in the month.

"As an international cricketer, they just expect you to turn up and perform, not knowing what you're going through," Abidi says, holding high expectations of herself.

To make sure she was ready for the challenge, she called up her coach Sagheer, the younger brother of Zaheer Abbas, and requested him to give her full attention for those 12 days of training. He agreed and even arranged for four matches, apart from the usual training sessions.

The Zaheer Abbas Cricket Academy, in Karachi, was a 45-minute drive from her mother's house, where she would leave her kid before heading for training. Aiman Anwar, the Pakistan cricketer, would pick her up and drop her back home. One day, just when they reached the ground, Abidi got a call from her mother. Having spent the better part of his young life being raised solely by his mother, Abbas was struggling to adapt to the new routine.

"Abbas is not comfortable around strangers," she explains. "So I would feed him and put him to sleep before leaving. But when my mother called, he had woken up and noticed that I wasn't around. She said, 'Abbas is crying. Hicchki le kar ro raha hai (uncontrollably). I'm unable to handle him. Can you come back and take him with you?'

"I had just travelled 45 minutes one way, now I had to travel the same distance back. 'How can I play cricket like this?' I wondered. For a fleeting moment, I was angry."

Sagheer gave Abidi his car to drive back; and amidst the chaos of Karachi streets, with several thoughts running in her head, she returned to pick up her child. "I was driving in Pakistan after nearly two years. I had lost touch of driving on those roads where cars are passing you by from all sides and honking incessantly. I picked him up and returned to the ground, travelling another 45 minutes."

"Neend mein chote sahab tunn the (He was still sleepy). While I was practising, he fell asleep on the grass. A cricket ground is no place for a child to be sleeping. I removed my helmet, my gloves and pads, picked him up in my arms and sat for the rest of the day."

She couldn't practice that day, so she asked her husband, Asad, to take care of the kid when she isn't around. But that wasn't enough to bring her focus back to cricket. "The issue was that Abbas was reliant on me. He wouldn't eat if I was not feeding him. So that thought would always worry me: 'What if he's not eating?'. Even though I would leave only after feeding him in the morning, my matches would go on till evening. I wasn't sure if someone else would have been able to feed him. I was extremely stressed. I wanted to cry and scream. There were times when I would think: "Should I be doing all this?"

***

If not for the natural high self-belief that Mir talks about, it would have been impossible for Abidi to return to cricket. The first centurion for Pakistan in ODIs, she was one of Pakistan's highest run-getters in limited overs cricket when she got married in January 2017. Soon after the 50-over World Cup that year, she had taken a brief sabbatical from cricket. She returned for the Asia Cup in 2018 but went on a six-month break again to be with her husband, who was working in the USA.

"Being in a long-distance relationship wasn't easy for me. Marriage is a commitment and I wanted to remain fair to it," she says. "I was supposed to return to Pakistan in December 2018 and resume my cricket from 2019. But during my stay in USA, I found out that I was pregnant.

"I wasn't expecting it but who isn't happy to become a mother? I was happy, so were my family members."

It came at a time when she was getting offers from multiple teams to play in Bangladesh's domestic leagues, where she had performed well in 2017. There were opportunities to play for clubs in USA. "Cricket was calling me."

The pregnancy, however, meant a long break from cricket. "There was a bit of sadness that my cricket would end but I wasn't entirely disappointed knowing that. I had played 13 years of international cricket till then."

At that point, there weren't too many examples of international cricketers returning to play at the highest level after childbirth, certainly none from the subcontinent. There were ample physical and social constraints that ended their cricket. Abidi was certain that a return to the Pakistan team wasn't possible. However, she did sense a scope of playing for USA, primarily from what she witnessed during Pakistan's tour of England in 2013.

"I remember watching a cricketer in England who was training in the nets while her two kids were being taken care of by their grandmother. So I was confident that even I could make a comeback. If not match the level of the Pakistan side, at least for USA."

It was an ambitious goal, for even she had not fully accounted for the troubles post pregnancy. "The nature of Asad's job is such that he is away from home for two weeks at a stretch. I would be alone with my son on those days. Unlike in Pakistan, we don't have domestic help in USA, since hiring them is expensive. My in-laws came and stayed with me for a month after my delivery and took care of everything. Once they went, I sank. I was alone. I knew there was no one to take care of me.

"Post pregnancy, my body was in pain, going through the healing process. I had taken Epidural injections during Abbas's delivery due to which I had severe back issues. I couldn't bend or even sit in one place for a long time. It was a weird sort of a backache.

"There were also issues with my ligaments and pain in my wrist, which is common after child delivery. For three months, it felt like my left wrist just didn't exist. My doctor advised me to keep it immobilized and not move it around a lot. I asked, 'How is a mother, who is alone with a child, not to use her hands?' So he asked me to use steroids to help ease my pain.

"To add to it, mentally I was exhausted. When your hormonal levels drop, it feels like you've lost everything. There were a lot of people around trying to tell me how a kid should be raised. That just added to the stress. It was a period of incredible low."

Honest conversations with her mother helped her heal mentally. "She got me to open up about my problems. After all, she knew and understood what pressures and stress childbirth can bring.

"However, by the time I could get out of it, it took a long time. My body was in no position for me to even contemplate returning to cricket. All that I was left with were the memories of playing the game, of living that carefree bachelor life, where there were no sounds of a baby crying, of changing nappies or of losing sleep.

"Raising a kid is a 24/7 job. I often joke about this with my friends - I may have left cricket but I'm playing the longest format now. It's only when my husband would return from work that I would get to catch up on some sleep. He would take care of our son and that eased the burden on me."

Through all of this though, Abidi's ambition to return to cricket may have dwindled but not fully extinguished. Five months after giving birth, she returned to Pakistan for a few days along with her son. "In India and Pakistan, it's our aiyashi (luxury) that we get domestic help, where we're getting massages - for ourselves and the kid. Mothers are well taken care of. I was missing all of that in USA. So I got those treatments done in Pakistan."

And once there, she also decided to resume her cricket practice. It didn't work out.

"My body would shiver while playing. And after playing, I couldn't get up from my bed for the next two days. My body was weak. I realised I didn't have the same energy. That's when I knew that I needed to give more time for my recovery and resume training only when my body has regained the same energy that I once had."

She returned to USA and decided to regain her fitness, starting with work on her back and core. "There was a gym and a pool in the apartment we stayed in. For the 14 days that Asad would be at home, I would get a chance to go and work out for an hour or two when my son was asleep. However, when he was at work, I had to skip my exercises."

For six months, she worked on her fitness when she was informed about a talent hunt being organised by New Jersey's cricket body. She contacted the officials, but the COVID-19 outbreak halted all cricket, like every other sport and profession around the world. Stuck at home, she would knock the ball that was suspended from the ceiling.

"I would play in front of a mirror to work on my body alignment. That was the only practice I got during that time. There were mainly two reasons why I was doing so. Firstly, what if I get a call-up someday? I should be ready for it. My body should be fit and ready to play. Secondly, my mother was certain that I should be fit just like I was during my playing days.

"The break gave me time to work on my mental and physical health. I also checked with the officials of US Cricket if I would be eligible to play the ICC Qualifiers for USA. It eventually got postponed and I became eligible for selection. I was asked to join a two-day camp in Dallas in April 2021."

***

Celebrating the second birthday of Abbas and practising with her former teammates and coach in Karachi, Abidi returned to USA after two weeks for the two-day camp organised by US Cricket in Dallas.

With Asad back to work, she reached out to a relative to babysit her son in Dallas. "She was as much a stranger for him as anyone else and as a result, he couldn't get along with her. He would cry whenever I would leave for practice. But she knew how to handle the children."

Additionally, life in Dallas was hectic. "I would wake up at 5 AM, read namaaz and head for training at 5.30. When I would return, Abbas would be awake. I would change his nappies and give him a bath. At 7.30, I would run to get breakfast for Abbas and his nanny. I would just grab an apple and a cup of tea for myself before leaving with the team at 8 AM."

But there was an important message from the nanny. She had said, "When you're playing, forget the fact that you're a mother. When you're on the field, just enjoy your cricket. I will take care of your kid."

"That relieved me of a lot of stress," Abidi admits. "Yet, while playing, every now and then, I would wonder what Abbas must be doing and quietly go to my phone and drop a message to check on him. Is he troubling her a lot? Is he getting troubled? Every time she would say he's sleeping, it would help me play without stress."

The camp started out with a fitness test, the first she was giving in four years. "I had exerted myself a lot, but the following day, in a 20-over match, I scored an unbeaten 41 before I was called back by the coach."

It was a good outing for her on the cricketing front but three days later, she developed symptoms of COVID-19. "I had fever and body ache. Every step I would climb felt like a hundred more. I was struggling to breathe. But I had to have my mask on all day to ensure that I didn't pass the virus if any to Abbas. I felt like I was dying. My husband wasn't getting off from work, and I asked him not to return. It was better that one person instead of two be affected by it. But I was all alone, feeding myself and my kid every day."

After 15 days, fortunately, she recovered.

But the illness had yet again taken a toll on her health. "When I resumed my work on fitness, I was struggling with my breathing, I would get tired quickly. To add to it, I was suffering from insomnia. I was falling asleep late in the night but waking up to Abbas's clock. When he would take his afternoon nap, I would resume my training in the small setup in our basement."

She went slow with her training process, but regained fitness in a month's time before becoming a part of Philadelphia in the intra-regional tournament.

"I finally got to bat in competitive matches, which I hadn't been able to for a long time. We played three matches - two T20s and one 40-over game. After a long time, my performances earned me a lot of praise. That made me feel really good."

To help her further, Asad was aided by his employer Schlumberger's dual career program, which emphasised on giving both the spouses a fair chance to excel in their individual careers. It meant that they would accommodate his work schedule around her tournaments.

"Asad told me 'You play, I'll take care of Abbas.' That was a big relief for me."

The issue though now revolved around managing finances of pursuing the sport.

After playing for Philadelphia, she was selected to play for North Carolina in the Regional Championship. "In the intra-regional and regional competitions, players had to bear all the expenses: ground fees, match fees and umpire fees. To add to it, the personal expenses - accommodation, travel, gas, toll, all of which would add up to USD 1500-1800 per trip. This doesn't even take into account the expenses for a nanny, gym, trainer, coach and equipment. Without a contract or sponsorship, it was beyond my means to be playing cricket. A few people, including Sana Mir, tried helping me out with sponsorship.

"Cricket has been my means of revenue, not an expense. There were a lot of sacrifices made to reach this far, and it was beyond me to sacrifice any more for it. There is no point in struggling if there's only more pain to follow."

She tried to voice her concerns and seek help from various officials but she wasn't sure if the help would reach her. 10 days before the regional championship, she withdrew from the tournament citing financial reasons. "I knew it wouldn't be feasible for me to continue playing. I left my training and went on a vacation with my family."

A day before the tournament though, US Cricket agreed to take care of the expenses. "They said 'just come', so I drove down to North Carolina a day before the tournament, performed well there and have now been selected to play in the National Championship.

"Sir Masood Chik, who has previously worked in USA Cricket, helped me get sponsorship from the owner of Michigan Star, Nabeel Ahmed. I'm now being sponsored for the National Women Championship, which is set to begin on August 2 in Florida. Abbas is again coming with me, Asad has taken a break from his work again. I still can't afford to hire a nanny but I can at least play cricket at peace."

A lot has worked out for her. "It's incredible how everything falls into place eventually. Allah has tested me but given me all that I wanted." She is still doubling up though - as a mother and an athlete wanting to make a comeback. Before heading for her training sessions, she feeds Abbas and puts him to sleep. She keeps one phone in front of her kid while he's sleeping, with the video camera on and carries the other phone with her.

"I train with one eye on my Apple watch and the other on my phone, looking at Abbas. In case he wakes up, I have to run home, sprint faster than I ever have. I guess, he has realised it by now, and probably gets up on purpose, hoping 'Amma bahar gayi hui hai, chalo shor machate hai aur amma ko bulate hai (let's wake mom up and trouble her)'.

"It's funny. I laugh at those moments and tell my mother about it. She reminds me: 'Being a mother is not easy, but I'm glad that you're able to manage both, I salute you'. I'm not sure why she salutes me for it. I'm just about fulfilling my desire of playing the last couple of years of cricket that's left in me."