Rehan Ahmed is younger than Facebook, Strictly Come Dancing and T20 professional cricket.
His father is just two years older than James Anderson, who was playing in his 10th Test on the day Ahmed was born. Club cricketers around the world will have owned pieces of equipment for longer than they have been alive.
In terms of cricket, Ahmed has always done things in a hurry.
Before the age of 10, he played on googlies, pinball machines and sliders. At 11, he fired past and present England captains Alastair Cook and Ben Stokes into Lord’s nets. A year later, he impressed the late great Shane Warne.
Now, at 18 years and 126 days, he played Test cricket at a younger age than any other man to don an England shirt. You have to go back to 1899 to find an England player with less than Ahmed’s three first-class appearances on his Test debut.
For someone used to moving at the pace of life, Ahmed actually found his feet in Test cricket by slowing down.
Understandably, his first outing on day one of the Third Test against Pakistan in Karachi was nervous.
Seeming a little rushed, his five overs in the morning session cost 37 runs. Leg spinning is the hardest art to perform in cricket at the best of times, let alone when you’re just four months from legal adulthood and bowling with Babar Azam and Azhar Ali, two of the greatest Pakistanis to ever pull out a blade.
Returning after lunch, Ahmed was relaxed and ready to rip.
He flicked right hand holds to the left and tugged at the shoulders of his shirt as if he had to borrow it from a taller boy. He walked two steps then rushed to the crease, unleashing flat legs and devilish googlies.
It was with the googly that Ahmed trapped Saud Shakeel for his first Test wicket. After southpaw Shakeel looked for one that turned away, the next ball, a broken leg, spun back, took the inside edge and was caught by a short-legged Ollie Pope dive. Ahmed was assaulted.
Not the tallest, Ahmed grew in stature. He was the bowler when Babar was exhausted and Faheem Ashraf tormented by Ahmed, who bowled so far down the wrong line that he ended up on the Bakerloo when he should have been on the Circle.
For a long stretch, Ahmed beat England’s number one spinner Jack Leach, but Leach grabbed the last three wickets to finish with 4-140 – the experienced old pro teaching the youngster how to feast on rabbit pie.
Still, Ahmed’s 2-89 made him the youngest leg player to take two wickets in a Test inning for 17 years.
“It’s probably the best day of my life so far,” Ahmed told Test Match Special with an unwavering smile.
“I was very nervous. It was good to get rid of the first one and then slowly settle in.
“Over time, I felt a lot more comfortable, like it was a good place. I wasn’t thinking ‘do this or do that’.”
Ahmed’s day began with the receipt of his England cap, his father Naeem at his side, from former captain Nasser Hussain.
Hussain was skipper when England last played a Test in Karachi, in 2000. They also had a spinner in their legs then, although that turned out to be the last time Ian Salisbury played for England.
Over the next 22 years, England picked up five more forward leg players from Ahmed – Chris Schofield, Scott Borthwick, Adil Rashid, Mason Crane and Matt Parkinson. Only Rashid played more than two Tests.
If English cricket has long dreamed of finding its own version of Warne, then the mass misunderstanding of leg rotation in our country is matched only by the collective failure to choose Warney’s fin.
Luckily for Ahmed, he has a captain in Stokes and a coach in Brendon McCullum whose whole philosophy is based on removing player pressure. They made the prospect of failure less scary than Winnie the Pooh after a few gins.
“There’s not too much pressure to perform, just to have fun,” Stokes said. “You only debut once, you can never do it again. If we can make him look like he had a good time and walks away with wickets and runs , that would be wonderful.”
Not that Ahmed is likely to be fazed by the challenge of playing at the highest level. Those who know him speak of his immense confidence, not to mention an insatiable desire to have a bat or a ball in his hand at every possible opportunity.
During The Hundred, Southern Brave coach Mahela Jayawardene ordered Ahmed to take a day off from training. Ahmed still snuck towards the nets.
Rahim Ali, Ahmed’s childhood mentor who now works with him in Leicestershire, told BBC Sport: “We were playing away against Northants. I was at the hotel and around 11 at night, I heard bullets on a bat.
“I knocked on the wall then texted to find out which room he was in – he was next. He said he was trying out his new bat for the next day.”
Perhaps the closest thing to Ahmed’s downfall came after the fence in Karachi.
Saqlain Mushtaq, legendary spinner and now Pakistan coach, was talking about Ahmed.
“It was a very impressive performance,” said Saqlain. “I really liked his control. The most important thing was his confidence. He has a lot of potential. He looks like a very good prospect for the England team.”
Ahmed was listening at the back of the room.
“I didn’t want to hear that, it pissed me off a bit,” he said.
Ahmed may have to get used to it. It was a very promising start.
