In May of 2019, Rasikh Salam found himself at a prime location in the Mumbai Indians dugout as the team sought to outdo fellow IPL royalty Chennai Super Kings and clinch a fourth title. Nearly two months earlier, Rasikh had played his first and only game of the season, but that didn’t alter his seating arrangement. He sat beside MI’s then Director of Cricket Operations Zaheer Khan, their conversations flowing as they had all season while one of the greatest finals in the tournament’s history unfolded in Hyderabad.
Rasikh, young and still slightly green, was picked on potential and instructed to sit in during matches with the former India pacer. Zaheer drew the youngster into conversations that demanded he think deeper about the game. At the time, much of what the veteran spoke about went over Rasikh’s head.
“He [Zaheer] would make notes of what is going on in a particular over, and then ask me what do you think the bowler should do now? He’d ask ‘If you were there, what would you do?’. There were a lot of things we spoke about and at that time, I didn’t grasp a lot of it, but as I’ve grown older, I realise the importance of it,” Rasikh tells Cricbuzz.