Hassan Khan - the Unicorn of San Francisco
For someone who idolized Shahid Afridi growing up in Karachi, San Francisco Unicorns' all-rounder Hassan Khan is too unassuming, too quiet, and too evasive.
You ask a question and he’ll give you the most direct, laconic answer. You tell him a horrible joke and he’ll not let you feel bad and add on the smile of a college junior for good measure.
But inside him, you can sense heat. There's a determination in the way the left-arm spinner and right-handed batter speaks about his cricket, which is hard to explain.
Perhaps it comes from him being one of the most promising talents in Pakistan as a teenager, impressing in back-to-back Pakistan Super League (PSL) seasons against players double his age, captaining Pakistan in the 2018 Under-19 World Cup, and then being left without more opportunities.
So, he doesn't like speaking about leaving his country and family just over a year ago and moving to the US, though he accepts it was a difficult decision. He then mentions moving on and you realize that the fire that simmers underneath his words is perhaps what fuels his special performances on the field.
In Major League Cricket (MLC) 2024, his first season in the top flight of US T20 cricket, Hassan has batted five times and bowled in four innings for the Unicorns. Sheer stats including his ridiculous bowling average of 9.50 won't do justice to the impact he has had on the franchise's season.
In the most recent match, against the unbeaten table-toppers Washington Freedom, Hassan bowled a wicketless four-over spell But, his economy rate was 6.8.
Freedom scored 174 in 15.3 overs and none of his teammates went for less than 10 runs/over. It took Hassan 17 balls to concede his first six and three more to be hit for a boundary in the match.
Then, a big rain delay meant the Unicorns were asked to chase 177 runs in 14 overs. They got off to a great start but were reeling at 122/4 in 10 overs.
Hassan came like a whirlwind and smashed 32* (11) to support the well-set Sanjay Krishnamurthi (79* off 42), helping the Unicorns chase the target with two balls to spare. Hassan's strike rate of 290.91 was the best in the game.
"It was a great day," he tells Sportskeeda from Dallas. "Sanjay played really well and everyone else chipped in... When the target is so big, there's nothing much to discuss. You just have to express yourself and play your shots. Even Sanjay and I, we didn't have time to talk about anything. It was just about going hard from ball one so we played our shots and found success."
This was also the first time Hassan had bowled his full quota of overs this season. One match earlier, against the Seattle Orcas, Hassan took three wickets in just two overs.
And not just any wickets. There was a ball in the 16th over that drifted in from wide of the crease to land on the seam in front of the leg stump, turn exactly enough to beat Keemo Paul's bat, and travel over his crouched back-pad to hit the top of off.
"You can call it a dream ball," he says. "There was a bit of help for spinners in the pitch so I just wanted to pitch the ball in the right areas. He had just come to the crease and I thought if I pitch it in the right areas, it won't be easy for the new batter to play. That's what I thought and executed."
And a few minutes before that, on the first ball of his spell in the 14th over, he took out Heinrich Klaasen. The South African munches even the best-length balls against spinners with backfoot sixes but couldn't against the Karachi man.
"I had it in the back of my mind that I shouldn't give him room or let him extend his hands," Hassan says. "That bull spun and bounced a bit which worked in my favor. It was the first ball so I didn't get to think too much but I just wanted to put in the right areas and the spin and bounce made him sky it."
In the game before that, MI New York needed 55 off six overs and Hassan sneaked in seven dots and a wicket in his two overs, conceding just nine runs. And in the one before that, Texas Super Kings were cruising in the chase of a tiny 128-run target and Hassan took two of the only three wickets that fell before they won.
Raising the level
MLC is only two years old and in a country that is far from a traditional center of the sport. Most USA internationals were not born here and grassroots systems need time to produce locals who can compete with the best in the world.
To compensate for that, the league allows six overseas players in the 11, unlike the norm of four/five elsewhere. Still, one major obstacle each of the six franchises faces is getting the best out of the five locals - these include those who have permanently switched countries, like Hassan - who are often seen as weak links.
Freedom struggled with that, too, when they finished second from the bottom last season. This is why Hassan - drafted for little money after his outstanding performances in regional leagues - has been almost revolutionary.
"See, every team wants all of their players to perform well," he says. "But what I understand -- and it's something I have noted before as well, like in the PSL -- is that only those teams where the local players perform well find success, no matter what the tournament is. I think we are very lucky that all the local players, whether it's Sanjay, Corey Anderson who is also playing like a local, fast-bowler Brody Couch and myself, all of us local players are chipping in. And I think it's one of the reasons for our team's success. Our international players have anyway been doing well. They are getting our support and the team is benefiting from it."
The win over Freedom meant the Unicorns finished the league stage second on the table, with the only difference being a few net run rate points.
More importantly, as the two teams fixed a date in Thursday's (July 25) Qualifier, Freedom seemed hurt by momentum and confidence in their locals like Saurabh Netravalkar (0/36) and Justin Dill (0/13) that had been slowly built up.
Finding home
The environment has helped Hassan too. He says he didn't mind grinding it out and slowly earning Anderson's trust to bowl four overs and credits the management for creating an excellent dressing room atmosphere.
He has a great relationship with the head coach, Shane Watson, from their Quetta Gladiators days in the PSL. Pakistani internationals Abrar Ahmed and Haris Rauf, and his Chicago Kingsmen teammate Tajinder Singh have helped him settle too.
"The best thing I feel here is that everyone is told to just go out there and play fearlessly," Hassan adds. "It's just a great atmosphere which is only getting better. Although, I haven't talked to a lot of people [to learn new things] but you catch things by watching people. You know all the batters we have are destructive (smiles), there's Finn Allen and Matthew Short, among others. I try to watch them bat and note what things they are doing well and what I can absorb. That's how I have learned a lot from them."
Outside of the Unicorns, there are cricket friends Iqra Farooqi, Salman Abbasi, who "takes care of him like an elder brother", Saad Ali, and his housemate Asif Mehmood who "is a very good cook" to make Houston feel as much like home as possible.
"When you are away from the family, you need some people who you can turn to when you miss the family," he says.
Hassan is happy here now. He came to the USA for opportunities and there's no shortage of that, thanks to the countless leagues and clear pathways.
He'll need to be here another couple of years to be eligible to represent the country in international cricket, which shouldn't be that difficult if he continues on this trajectory. Then he'll need a bit more time to be a USA citizen and apply, if he'd want to, for the IPL. But all that's too far for the moment.
"Everyone's eyes are on the championship," Hassan says. "Our attempt would be to continue playing the cricket we have so far and Inshallah, everything would be good."
He'll get at least two more chances for the Unicorns this season and is focused on making the most of them, with the hope to open gates for other tournaments like the Caribbean Premier League and the Big Bash League which will follow in the coming months.
We'll never know. Maybe, if everything was fine in Pakistan, he'd have somehow made it to the top. Or maybe, he'd have been lost in the glut of spin all-rounders they have.
In San Fransisco, though, he's a quiet 25-year-old who bowls four economical overs in the second half of a T20 innings against some of the best batters in the world and hits sixes for fun with the maturity to finish games from number five. On the blossoming fields of the MLC, he's truly a Unicorn.