The making of Moeen

[Patorick]

http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/926493/the-making-of-moeen

The making of Moeen

Family, faith, and the journey from inner-city Birmingham to poster boy for multicultural Britain

George Dobell | November 2015

Moeen Ali is an unlikely recipient of death threats. He is an unlikely victim of booing, too. And of a hit-and-run driver seemingly determined to kill him. An elegant batsman and a soft-spoken man with a desire to use his cricketing skills to promote racial harmony and social mobility, it seems odd that he provokes such negative passion. Surely disliking Moeen is like disliking rainbows or ice cream?

But then Moeen's is an unlikely story. In modern England, anyway. It's a story of family, of sacrifice, of unity, of humility, of talent overcoming poverty. The most unlikely thing about Moeen? His ambitions. Many cricketers aspire to a career in the media or as a coach after their playing careers end. But Moeen, among other things (he talks of opening a chip shop named "Big Mo's"), wants to clean the toilets in the local mosque.

To understand Moeen Ali, it is probably helpful to understand the experience of his father, Munir Ali.

Munir had things tough. He was born in Birmingham to a mother from the city, Betty, and a Kashmiri father. As a baby he was sent to Dadyal, near Mirpur in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, and did not return to England until he was 11. The family was desperately poor and Munir shared an attic room with three others in Birmingham. He went to school not speaking a word of English. Soon afterwards, his parents separated and he did not see either of them for 15 years. He was looked after by an uncle.

But somewhere in there - maybe during the ten-mile round trips he walked to ask the extended family for food, maybe while he was being racially abused in unenlightened Chelmsley Wood of the 1970s, maybe after he was bullied for the ferocious stammer he developed from his lack of confidence - Munir made himself a promise. When he had children he was going to give them all the love and support he lacked. He was going to give them every opportunity, every advantage, every assurance he could. Never would they suffer the loneliness or isolation he experienced.

It is a promise he has kept. Munir has four healthy, happy children who have imbibed his work ethic and love of family. Now, 35 years after those trying days, he refers to himself as "a blessed man".

It wasn't easy. Despite his late start in education, Munir gained five O levels and qualified as a psychiatric nurse. But the strain of supporting four children may have contributed to him suffering a stroke at a relatively young age. Struggling to return to work, he concentrated instead on coaching his children to play the game he loved, the game that had been one of his few sources of joy in those difficult, formative years.

"I used to lie awake at night," Munir says, "and worry that I was letting them down. I thought to myself, if they don't succeed in life because they lack talent or hard work, then okay. But if they don't make it because I have failed them, I could never forgive myself."

He need not worry on that score. All his children are employed in rewarding professions. Two of his sons make a living from cricket: Moeen, and Kadeer, who recently became just the 12th man to score 1000 runs in the top division of a Birmingham League season (Andy Flower, Graeme Hick, Grant Flower and Graham Yallop are among the others; nobody had done it since 1996).

"He always found the money," Moeen remembers. "Kadeer was better at school, so when they felt it was necessary, they found the money for tuition to get him through the 11-plus. And when I needed some coaching to improve my defence, my dad found the money for ten sessions with Neal Abberley [a legendary figure in Warwickshire circles, whom Ian Bell credits for much of his development]. I've no idea how my mum and dad did it. The sacrifices they made... Well, they make you think."

At the end of his first summer as an England cricketer, Moeen bought his dad a new car. "I'll never be able to do enough to repay them," he says simply.

Munir is proud of the car. Not because it is a handsome machine - a large, shiny jeep - but because of what it represents: family, selflessness, success, loyalty, respect. "They're good boys," Munir says quietly. "Their mother must have done a good job."

He is a gentle man. The only time Moeen has ever seen him lose his temper is when he, Moeen, was the victim of a hit-and-run. He was 13 at the time. As he was walking home from school one day a car veered towards him. It missed, but after it skidded to a halt, the driver - an Asian man whom Moeen says he has seen neither before nor since - shouted abuse out of the window and reversed hard into Moeen, who was fortuitously pushed to the side. The car hit the curb so hard that it turned on its roof in the middle of the road. A shopkeeper phoned Munir, who rushed to the scene to find Moeen crying and bleeding heavily from one leg. Munir checked on the driver too, but his concern quickly turned to disgust when he realised this was not an accident.

"He said something along the lines of 'You're lucky I didn't kill him,'" Munir recalls. "And as I understood he had done it on purpose, I lost my temper. I hit him hard on the jaw and the nose. I've never been so angry." Just for a moment, as blows rained down, Moeen thought his father would beat the man to death. But a crowd gathered and pulled the pair apart. The police soon arrived, took statements from witnesses, as well as from Moeen in school the next day, but the family was not informed of further action.

All the while, cricket played a huge role in the Ali family life. Moeen's cousin Kabir Ali had a cricket ball placed in his cot the day he was born, and went on to play Test cricket for England. Munir himself missed the birth of his daughter because he was playing two matches a day in the leagues around Birmingham. Munir and his brother - twins who married sisters in arranged marriages, and then lived next to one another - eventually built a net in the back garden and spent many, many hours playing and coaching there. It wasn't just a game to them. It was a way to a better life.

Sometimes Munir was faced with tough choices. On more than one occasion, he could not afford petrol and food. Once, wanting to ensure Moeen made it to a trial game in Somerset, he scoured the house for coins, and having looked under the sofa and through all his pockets, found just enough to make Moeen sandwiches, fill the car with petrol and drive him to Taunton. At the innings break, Moeen brought his sandwiches to share with his father. "I'd have been very proud of him if he hadn't made it as a cricketer," Munir says. "He's a very good boy."

He wasn't always. As a teenager Moeen was like most boys: a bit cheeky, rarely focused, and often on the fringes of trouble. It is no exaggeration to say that without cricket, and then religion, he could have drifted into a murky world.

"Cricket saved me," he says. "Honestly, I don't know what I would have done without it. My dad was always very good. He instilled discipline. But when I look around at what so many of my friends ended up doing... There weren't a huge amount of opportunities. A lot of them slipped into gangs and drugs. I would like to think I'd have avoided that, but I don't know. It would have been very easy to fall into that world. I've been very lucky."

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