Last night at the Savoy hotel in London, Sachin Vaja was one of two young cricketers to be awarded the inaugural Lord’s Taverners Jim Laker Spin Scholarship. He was in the most exalted company, with seven of the nine surviving members of the 1956 Old Trafford Test there — thanks to the efforts of Brian Downing, the former president of Surrey — to commemorate 50 years since Laker took 19 wickets in a Test match.

The 22-year-old from East London has travelled far since last August. He was discovered by Neil Burns, the chief executive of London County Cricket club, and could be at the beginning of a successful career.

“I was helping my old man clear out the shed, so me and my mate had gone to the junkyard and on our way back, I get a phone call from a mate reading the Ilford Recorder, saying there are some talent scouts in Ilford,” Vaja said. “He said ‘why don’t you have a bowl?’ We get to a roundabout and straight is home, but if I take a right I go to the cricket in Valentine’s Park. I’m wearing ripped clothes and I’m with a dodgy mate. But I go right. My life has completely changed from those 12 balls I bowled.”

Vaja can touch his forearm with his thumb. He has rubber wrists and can bowl a mystery ball, similar to Muttiah Muralitharan’s doosra.

He grew up in the shadow of West Ham United in Upton Park before moving to Ilford. Only then did he learn to play cricket on his knees in the front room with his brother, an old dictionary and a tennis ball. Until this year, Vaja’s father, who moved to England from India at 14, was not that keen on him pursuing cricket.

Vaja took up bowling off spin only two years ago. He was (and still is) a Sunday park cricketer for Three Caps until four years ago when he started playing league cricket for Hainault and Clayhall as a batsman. He is in the second team. For the past year, finishing a physics degree has taken precedence, but under the wing of Burns, Vaja got another chance at the beginning of July.

“I was at Canterbury and it was the day before the England A v Pakistan match and Neil Burns had brought Sachin to bowl spin at the players in the nets,” David Parsons, the ECB spin bowling coach, who selected Vaja for the award, said.

“It is not often you are stopped in your tracks and it wasn’t just me, Peter Moores [the national cricket centre director] was there. Here was a young bowler with an unorthodox action in the Murali mould. Ian Bell was batting in the nets and you are really watching him, then this bowler spins one from a long way outside off stump into his pads and next ball spins one past his outside edge.”

Vaja was the only one of 12 of the brightest spin prospects called up for an ECB spin trial in Derby a fortnight ago who had no county after his name. “What we saw in Derby confirmed what we saw in Canterbury,” Parsons said. “He is an exciting talent, he puts a lot of energy into his action and a lot of revolutions on the ball.”

Two weeks’ training in Bombay and a first winter of cricket await him.

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