Nearly a century later a group of his traveller’s countrymen came to Bombay — only this time carrying bats and balls instead of nuts and raisins.

And in the stifling heat, Afghanistan’s cricket team, cobbled together after the ousting of the Taleban, wrote a memorable story of their own, thrashing an MCC team led by Mike Gatting, the former England captain.

While the MCC could field players trained in academies and honed in county teams, members of the Afghan team first came across cricket in refugee camps in Pakistan.

Haftigul Abid and Karim Sadiq, two brothers from Jalalabad, will never forget their victory by 171 runs at the Police Gymkhana Ground. After Mohammad Nabi had hit 13 sixes in his 116 to take the side to 356 for 7, Haftigul induced the edge from Gatting’s bat and Karim caught it, sparking wild celebrations as Gatting trudged back to the shade of the shamiana with a nought to his name.

“I got a decent ball,” Gatting said. “I don’t know much about them, but I heard that some of their players picked up the game in Pakistan and played much of their cricket there. And they’re clearly useful.”

Haftigul was still pinching himself. “I am so happy, he’s such a senior player. I’m only 22. He’s probably been playing for longer than that.”

While the MCC side, two players with first-class experience and eight who play for the counties, treated it as another tour game, the Afghans saw it as the crowning glory of their fledgling international careers.

When the Soviet army rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 sparking a prolonged war with the Mujahidin, more than six million Afghans trekked across the Khyber Pass into Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Refugee camps sprung up in Peshawar and other towns.

Navroze Mangal, who opened the batting for the local team, was part of that exodus and remembers the moment when cricket became part of his life. “Pakistan had just won the World Cup (1992), and I thought, ‘Well, this looks like an interesting game to play’. We started in the streets, and then played it at school. I’ve been with the national team for five years now.”

The idea for the fixture came from Robin Marlar, the president of the MCC, who took great delight in seeing the Afghans whack the ball onto Marine Drive and in the direction of the suburban trains rattling by on the other side of the ground.

“About eight years ago, Mark Scrase-Dickens, a mountaineer and an officer in the Gurkha Regiment, asked at an MCC meeting why we couldn’t do something for Afghan cricket,” he said. “We then came up with the idea of an extra fixture during this tour of India.”

The Afghan team gladly received funding for the tour from the MCC and is calling for more. “We need stadiums, equipment and coaches,” said Karim the maverick wicketkeeper-batsman who has modelled himself on India’s Virender Sehwag.

Next to him, Hamid Hassan, a burly fast bowler, nodded. As a teenager in Kabul under the Taleban regime, which banned cricket as a Western aberration, he never even dreamt of playing international cricket.

Now, after his trip to Bombay, he hopes to go even further: he aspires to emulate his heroes, Glenn McGrath and Andrew Flintoff.

Playing against Freddie at Lord’s? On this evidence, that fantasy could some day become a reality.

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