Having spent years as a professional cricket player, Muhammad Arshad opened an academy in his home city of Sahiwal, Pakistan, to train girls and boys. Some radical Islamists ordered him to stop training girls. He refused. Extortion and attacks followed and eventually he was forced to flee his home, leaving his family behind. After six years in Direct Provision in Galway, Dina, as he is known locally was granted a visa to live and work here. Now playing cricket with Galway, he has trained to coach the game in Ireland and intends to open an academy for young people locally. He tells ANDREW FLORIO about his hard journey to Ireland.

Muhammad Arshad, or Dina as he’s fondly known as in Galway, bowled his way through the summer of 2022 at Galway Cricket Club and picked up a coaching licence on the way.

The oval of Lissarulla, Galway, is a world away from the professional arenas around the world he once played in – and a step back from the coaching academy he once owned and ran.

But for Dina, it’s way of reconnecting with a life that was cruelly stolen and an opportunity to realise his dream of coaching women without fear of being murdered.

It’s 2015 in Sahiwal, Eastern Pakistan. Dina feels his nerves grow. Before him are three members of the terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a group known for its radical Islamic ideology, imposition of Sharia Law and brutal bombings over the previous two decades.

Summoned by their leader, Dina isn’t sure what’s about to unfold. Two six-foot-something henchmen stand either side of the boss who leans in and orders Dina: “We request you to go to Afghanistan for one month. Also, you will give us 400,000 rupees (€2,000). We need money.”

A shocked Dina thought of his wife and daughters as his life took a sharp turn.

The previous decade he had plied his trade as a pro cricketer, playing in Kenya, Bangladesh, Malaysia, England and, of course, Pakistan. For Dina who’d bowled and batted as a kid on the streets of Sahiwal, this was a dream come true.

“I didn’t see how a prince lives but I call my life that of a prince when I played cricket and travelled around the world,” he explains.

But after picking up an injury in 2003, Dina retired and began helping his dad, a former city mayor, in the family business.

After getting married, he was kept busy with daughters, Inshra, Umma and Ushra. But eventually, Dina had an urge to return to cricket and to training.

“A lot of my friends encouraged me, because I was doing a little bit of coaching at the ground already,” he recalls.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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