Chicago Chacha: The lone Pakistan cricket team cheerleader in India with Hyderabad roots

“I am getting old, have survived three heart attacks and I am not quite as energetic as I used to be,” says the 66-year-old. But the passion for the game remains undiminished.

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A familiar face at cricket World Cups — he has not missed one since 2007, suffered multiple heartbreaks of his team ending up title-less and made numerous friends of different nationalities — he has shed his energy in almost every cricketing city in the world and watched hundreds of games. “500, 400, frankly I don’t keep count. I just carry memories,” he says, with a quivering excitement in his tone.

But his most memorable game unfolds on Thursday, he says. For he could be the only fan from Pakistan who would watch the World Cup, at least at the start of the tournament. Stringent visa regulations have been a hurdle for fans from across the border to make the trip in time for Pakistan’s first game, against the Netherlands on Friday. Bashir has an American passport, and hence had no trouble in procuring a visa.

A familiar face at cricket World Cups — he has not missed one since 2007, suffered multiple heartbreaks of his team ending up title-less and made numerous friends of different nationalities. (PTI)

He hopes there will be more fans from Pakistan — the PCB has apparently requested the ICC to expedite the process — but irrespective of the outcome, he would sustain his flag-waving chutzpah. Rather than feeling lonely or fearing the hostility of the fans, he looks at the prospect of being a one-man cheerleader with relish and added responsibility. “Life is all about new experiences, and if I were to be the only supporter of my team, that would be a memory of a lifetime. It gives me all the more reasons to support Pakistan. Why do you need to be afraid? The people, be it on the streets or in the stands, have been utmost friendly,” he says.

With a streak of mischief in his sparkling eyes, he likes to cater to the gallery. “I would start chanting “Jeetega bhai jeetega and pause, and the crowd would chant Hindustan jeetega. I will sing along. There would be occasional banter, but at the end of the day, we leave the ground with a hug, a selfie. Sometimes we exchange numbers too,” he says, listing out the friends he has made in the country, some of them super-fans themselves.

He then clears his throat and clarifies: “As much as being a Pakistan fan, I am a fan of cricket and cricketers too. So it does not matter whether I am the only one from the country or there are thousands of others. I like watching Kohli as much as I love Babar,” he says. His favourite cricketer was MS Dhoni and he vouched to stop travelling for tournaments once he retired. “But I couldn’t resist the game’s pull. I couldn’t resist missing a World Cup in India, even more so because it is held in India,” he says.

It’s his third visit to India, and he says it is destiny that Pakistan start off their campaign in Hyderabad. “My parents migrated (to Karachi) from Hyderabad. They have told me lots of stories about the city. Then I married a girl from Hyderabad. So I am the city’s daamad (son-in-law). I can call it my home” he says. It’s for his wife that he usually wears a t-shirt with her picture and the line—‘jis desh mein ganga behti hai us desh ki meri biwi hai—embossed on it.

He and his wife own a restaurant chain in Chicago, Ghareeb Nawaz. Their signature dish invariably is the Hyderabad biryani, which they used to sell at a cheaper rate than other eateries. “We began by serving value-for-money food, and if our business had not flourished I would not have travelled around the world to watch cricket,” he says. In a sense, it is a Hyderabadi biryani-funded homecoming to Hyderabad.

His phone buzzes relentlessly. Some relative or a friend of his wife would want to meet him, or want to invite him for lunch or dinner, inevitably feeding him with the biryani. “Nothing beats the real one,” he says.

He has to maintain his diet, but flag waving, he says, burns all the calories. Many biryani-filled afternoons and evenings await him, so does the call of being his country’s sole flag-waver so far in this tournament.