Rafatullah Khan Mohmond, the 39 years old Peshawar born cricketer, is luckier than Australian Michal Klinger, who is 35 and has been performing well for more than a decade, but still without a chance to showcase his skills to the world.
He is a prolific batsman in Australian domestic cricket. He has been playing first class cricket since 1999 in Australia where the standard of domestic cricket is almost as high as international cricket.
He first represented Victoria, playing for them for eight years. Then he joined South Australia.
Klinger has joined Western Australia recently. He has also played country cricket in England where he represented Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.
For both counties he played outstandingly and completed more than one thousands runs in a year for two consecutive years.
Klinger has so far played 160 first class matches, scored more than 10,136 runs, with 26 centuries and 44 fifties. His highest score is 226 runs which he recently scored at the age of 35.
He has also played 150 List “A” matches, scored 6173 runs, including 14 centuries and 40 fifties at an average of 48.58.
He has also played 99 T20s, for Kochi Tuskers in IPL, and Adelaide Strikers in Big Bash. He has scored 3058 runs, including five centuries and 17 fifties. His highest score is 126 runs not out.
At the age of 16, he toured Pakistan with the under-19 team which was captained by Brad Haddin and coached by Allan Border. He played for Australia Under-19s for three years.
But unfortunately he has not managed to find a place in Australia’s national team, even after the retirement of stars such as Ricky Ponting, Michael Clark and Mike Hussey.
Thus, we can say that Pakistan is not the only place where injustice occurs with talented players. It can happen even in Australia, where merit, form and standard are usually given weight.
The Australian selectors gave chance to Chris Rogers, who was 34 years old and had performed brilliantly in T20 Big Bash.
They also gave chance to Adam Voges, who is also 34 years old. Even 40 years old Brad Hodge represented Australia in ODIs and T20Is.
It was being assumed that when Usman Khawaja got injured during the New Zealand test series earlier this month, the selectors would call him to fill in the place as he is a solid middle order batsman. But surprisingly they preferred to include an extra bowler.
He is in full form as he has scored more than one thousand runs for Glamorgan in 2015. He recently scored 200 runs for Western Australia. In Klinger Australia might find another Mathew Hayden or Mike Hussey, who were given chance to play Australia at a ripe age.
But if the selectors did not call him it would be unjust to the deserving cricketer.
“I still have ambitions to play for Australia so I’ll be doing all I can to keep piling on the runs over here this summer,” he recently said.
Klinger was the third-most prolific batsman this year in Australia’s domestic season with 1646 runs at 49.89.