Adnan Miakhel’s is an astonishing story that was turbocharged by one of England’s greatest players, who found him in his BBC show Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams. He has also depended on the kindness of teachers, the time of coaches and the unending support of foster parents, but Miakhel has his head screwed on and his eye on the target.
He is building on a promising start to life as an all-rounder. This season, in cricket played both for Lancashire and in the tough local cricket leagues, Miakhel has scored 997 runs at an average of 27.69 and taken 26 wickets at 29.54, the latter despite sustaining a mid-season injury.
In one Twenty20, he came in when Lancashire were 11-5 and anchored the innings, helping them to 81 all out. He then took two wickets before his injury struck. Without him, the match would have been a one-side affair, but he sees only room to improve. “I didn’t make a 50,” Miakhel says self-critically.
He is now working hard, but it comes after a period when life was hard. When he was 15, Miakhel’s father made his brother fight in the Afghan insurgency and his brother was killed. At that point his mother decided to get him out of Afghanistan.
People smugglers took him and by night he crossed into Iran, then Turkey, then into Europe, ending up in Preston as an unaccompanied minor in the back of a lorry in April 2021. He had been beaten by police on six different occasions during his five-month journey. He was granted asylum in 2022, and one of the few things he brought from Afghanistan was the word “cricket”, a game he thought he knew. Then he arrived in England and, during the hunger of Ramadan, his foster
family tried to distract him by turning on the Indian Premier League. In that instant, he saw a whole new ball game. “From that moment I said, ‘I should start this. I should definitely start this!’”
Miakhel asked to go and play that day but had to wait until the season began the following month, when his foster parents took him to White Coppice Cricket Club in Chorley. The start was inauspicious. His first ball was so off target it flew over the cricket net and into the canal behind. He nearly walked away then, but Miakhel is hugely grateful to those who persevered with him, even though he knew very little.
After working together on Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, the former England all-rounder got Miakhel into Rossall School for a Btec diploma in sport. He enters his final year of three next week. With its indoor nets and superb facilities, it was the ideal place for the young man, if initially disorientating.
Flintoff also put him on the radar of his old county Lancashire. They liked what they saw and he has been playing for their age group system for the past two seasons. Now Miakhel knows what is possible. This season he has been playing with Flintoff’s son Rocky, who started playing for the first XI this summer. Miakhel’s ultimate aim is to play Test cricket for England, but he doesn’t deal in dreams, only what he calls “targets”. The next one of those is in 2025 when he will have the chance to secure a professional contract.
