He was supposed to be turning out at Chichester Road, not Edgbaston.
On paper, Razaullah’s summer belonged to Cleethorpes in the Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League. A 21-year-old all-rounder, booked in for the 2026 season, a young overseas pro ready to make his name on club squares in North East Lincolnshire.
Instead, he walked out for Pakistan against England – and tore up the script.
At Edgbaston last week, on Test debut, he launched nine balls into the stands. Eighty-one runs from 63 deliveries, a statement innings in the most unforgiving format of the game. Not a gentle introduction. An arrival.
For Cleethorpes Cricket Club chairman Paul Hewstone, the view came with a twist of pride and a sting of what might have been.
They had done the hard work early. The club signed him in April, a calculated punt on raw talent rather than reputation. They wanted, in Hewstone’s words, a “young lad who probably wanted a bit of a chance”. Razaullah fitted it perfectly.
He was barely out of the foothills of his first-class career. Only eight games on his record when his name landed on Cleethorpes’ radar, but already a hundred to his name and a five-wicket haul in the book. Numbers that make club chairmen sit up and listen.
Then the phone calls started.
First came the Pakistan Super League. His arrival in Cleethorpes was pushed back. Understandable, they thought. Let him taste the big stage, then send him to North East Lincolnshire with confidence and stories.
The stories kept getting bigger.
“Sadly, after that he was called into a national training camp, and at the end of May we had to decide it wasn't going to happen,” Hewstone said. The deal that once looked like a coup for a Yorkshire league side slipped, quite reasonably, out of reach.
By the time he strode out at Edgbaston, Cleethorpes were watching the player who should have been theirs light up a different kind of summer.
The moments came quickly. Fourth ball of his Test career: Joe Root, gone. A modern great, nicked out almost before Razaullah had taken in the field. Not long after, Jofra Archer running in, the ball hard and hostile. Two deliveries, two clean swings, two straight sixes back over the bowler’s head.
“He absolutely must be [a star], to do what he has done,” Hewstone said, the admiration obvious. “Getting Joe Root out on the fourth ball of your Test career and hitting Jofra Archer for two straight sixes over your head – he's got a huge future ahead of him.”
For Cleethorpes, that future will now be watched from afar. The crowd at Chichester Road will not see those nine sixes in person, nor the brisk, fearless strokeplay that rattled England. As Hewstone put it, he would have “certainly given the crowd at Chichester Road something to look at”.
Instead, they can say they almost had him. That for a brief window, before Pakistan called, one of the game’s newest international firecrackers was pencilled into their team sheet.
The county leagues lose a recruit. Test cricket gains a livewire. And a 21-year-old who once just “wanted a bit of a chance” now carries the weight – and the thrill – of a nation’s expectations.
