Safyaan Sharif to Play for Whitehaven CC

The opportunities are getting better in the cricketing world. Gone are the days where international players like Steve Tikolo had to play international cricket till the age of 42-43 years and still barely got past 15 T20Is and 100-odd ODIs through careers that lasted nearly a couple of decades. Gone are the days where players had to work full time and play cricket part-time, because the scope has increased in the last few years.

Now, as a professional cricketer, you know you’re going to get plenty of chances if you perform consistently, even if you belong to an associate member nation like Scotland, Netherlands, UAE or other countries. One such consistent performer has been Safyaan Sharif, 27-year old bowling all-rounder from Scotland, who has been proving his abilities time and time again in the recent past.

So what if Scotland’s international calendar doesn’t have a lot of fixtures on it? The player still has his exposure at different levels, recently completing a season with Derbyshire in UK. Now, he found some more good news coming his way, having being signed by Cumbria Premier League side, Whitehaven Cricket Club.

Whitehaven took to Twitter to announce this signing, saying, “The club are delighted to announce the signing of Scottish International Safyaan Sharif as our professional for the 2019 season. Saffy, a seam bowling all rounder has played 36 ODIs and 29 T20Is for Scotland, played the last 4 games of the season as our sub professional.”

The club are delighted to announce the signing of Scottish International Safyaan Sharif as our professional for the 2019 season. Saffy, a seam bowling all rounder has played 36 ODIs and 29 T20Is for Scotland, played the last 4 games of the season as our sub professional. pic.twitter.com/hItPHgjUPP
— Whitehaven Cricket (@whitehavencc) November 6, 2018

Sharif has played for Whitehaven in the past and everyone is looking forward to this partnership once again. Read Scoops conducted an in-depth interview with Safyaan Sharif earlier this year and we’re constantly following the player’s progress in the circuit. We caught up with him once again to know how he’s feeling about this new challenge of playing for Whitehaven CC.

He said, “Firstly, I’m obviously delighted to have signed with Whitehaven. I played for them towards the end of this season as a sub-pro, I did really well and they also enjoyed my company. They welcomed me and made a feel like a part of the team, so I really enjoyed being there. I’ve played my cricket in Scotland for almost 15 years and played in the Premier League for almost 10 years as well, so now I just want to go out and try something different.”

“I want to showcase my skills in English conditions and in their leagues, so I’m making this move and we’ll have to wait and see how things go there. If my good form continues, maybe I’ll get some more County sign-ups along the way. So yeah, I’m very much delighted to be playing for them and I’m hoping the season goes well for me too. Thank you.”

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