Even as a 15-year-old growing up in Motihari, Bihar, Murtuza Hussain, a budding cricketer with modest means, knew Mumbai wasn’t merely the country’s cricketing hub but also the financial capital.

He grew up with boys whose pockets swelled when their families received the much-awaited money order from their fathers, taxi drivers or manual labourers in Mumbai.

Six years after Murtuza ventured into former Test opener Sudhir Naik’s National Cricket Club at Azad Maidan and bowled in his chappals, today he is the one bright spot in Mumbai’s miserable Ranji season.

Seventeen wickets from four games make the 21-year-old pacer the find of the season—and also the role model for several cricket migrants from UP and Bihar to Mumbai.

Murtuza’s close friend in the Mumbai Ranji team is 18-year-old left-arm spinner Iqbal Abdulla, who is now in South Africa with the India under-19 team. Iqbal left Azamgarh in UP four years back with dreams of wearing an India cap.

There are scores like them from north India, playing at different levels of the game in the city. Jamshedpur’s Ravishankar Singh was part of the Mumbai u-22 squad that took the national title recently. Mumbai’s junior cricket squads have Ashish Yadav, Raju Sharma, Abhishek Malviya and Nadeem Mehidi, who with their clean Hindi stand out in the dressing rooms where the official language is a highly mutilated Bombaiya version of the national language.

Though these cricketers at times say that they do get to hear that occasional derogatory ‘bhaiya’ slur, they are happy that the trip to the city has been worthwhile.

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