Oman’s Aamir Kaleem is the Associate world’s equivalent of Mr. Cricket. The 43-year-old left Pakistan in his teens, wallowed in the anonymity of domestic and corporate cricket in Oman, and now juggles coaching and playing to remain associated with the game.
Kaleem turned heads recently by picking three wickets against his country of birth, Pakistan, in Oman’s first-ever Asia Cup match in Dubai, and by humbling Shaheen Afridi with a six and a four off consecutive deliveries.
However, he was initially overawed by the star pacer’s aura.
“Normally, when we are facing a ball, we look at the bowler’s hand. But at one stage, I just looked at his [Shaheen’s] face and got a little distracted. I had the realisation that I was facing Shaheen Shah Afridi, the bowler whom we have seen perform in international cricket. God helped me out because I hit him for a six in the first over and then a boundary,” Kaleem told Sportstar.
Kaleem plays a shot during the Asia Cup Cricket match between Oman and Pakistan at Dubai International Cricket stadium in Dubai. | Photo Credit: AP
But fate hasn’t always smiled on Kaleem, who had to leave Pakistan to pursue his dream of playing cricket despite performing well at the age-group level.
“I started my cricket journey in Karachi. At the school level, I had the opportunity to play for Under-15, Under-17, and Under-19 teams. I performed very well in the Under-19 district tournaments, but unfortunately, I didn’t get selected for the national Under-19 team,” said Kaleem, who has shared the dressing room with Pakistan internationals Khurram Manzoor, Fawad Alam, and Khalid Latif.
In 2004, through his club in Karachi, Youngster Gymkhana, Kaleem learnt of an opening in a team in Oman, which was recruiting players. But even there, he wasn’t the first choice.
“They specifically wanted a left-handed batsman. The opening batsman of our club was given an offer, and not me. But he refused to go to Oman,” Kaleem said.
The next challenge was to convince his family, which was solely supported by Kaleem’s sister in the absence of their father. “I requested my seniors and captain to visit my home and convince my sister and mother. I had never even travelled outside Karachi.”
But Kaleem was adamant about pursuing his love for the game, and he knew the clock was ticking. He moved to Oman the same year, working in the delivery department of a bedding company in Muscat that specialised in spring mattresses.
He remembers hauling mattresses onto open trailers and into containers in temperatures ranging from 40 to 50 degrees Celsius.
It was an ordeal that Kaleem accepted, knowing that there was nothing to go back to in Pakistan.
“When you go to another country for work, you are considered a worker and not a cricketer. But I knew that if I went back to Pakistan from here, I wouldn’t be able to do anything in life. This was a new era for me,” he reiterated.
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Despite work taking up the majority of his time and energy, Kaleem’s cricketing talent shone through at the domestic level, and he eventually made his debut for Oman in 2012.
However, his poor run in his first tournament was exacerbated by a residential status rule that allowed a maximum of two players who only satisfied the four-year residency criteria in the Playing XI; the rest of the spots had to be filled by those in the seven-year residency bracket.
He was dropped from the team and returned only in 2015. Later, in 2018, the International Cricket Council (ICC) standardised the residency requirements to allow players to represent a country after completing just three years of residence there.
Kaleem featured fairly regularly for Oman till 2019 and also took part in its maiden T20 World Cup campaign in 2016. He credits this uptick in fortunes to his time spent working at an Indian restaurant chain called Passage to India, owned by K. K. Mohandas.
Passage to India also had a team on the domestic circuit in Oman, and it won the championship twice between 2010 and 2016-17, during Kaleem’s association with the side.
But even in his late thirties, setbacks continued to haunt him. In 2019, he suffered an ACL tear in his right knee that kept him away from the game for six to eight months.
Kaleem had to return to the grind of domestic cricket to force his way back into the team and work twice as hard as the youngsters who had claimed his spot during his recovery.
He made a comeback in late 2019, was in and out of the side for a while, and then reinvented himself as an opener in the ACC Men’s T20 Emerging Teams Asia Cup last year after moving up from the lower-middle order.
Reinvention at 40-plus in a tournament for ‘Emerging’ players may seem out of place, but for someone who has taken up coaching along with playing at the highest level, learning never stops.
After the pandemic, Kaleem, an ICC Level 2 coach and educator, joined Oman Cricket as a coach. Under his tutelage, the national Under-19 team was crowned champion of the ICC U-19 Men’s Cricket World Cup Asia Division 2 Qualifier Final in Bangkok last year.
The current Oman team also features one of Kaleem’s wards, Aryan Bisht, who made his T20I debut against the UAE during the ongoing Asia Cup.
“In one of our Under-19 tours, Aamir bhai was our head coach. A few months later, we were both in the ‘Emerging’ team as players. Aamir has seen me grow as a player. It has been wonderful seeing him as a coach and as a player,” Bisht, who is pursuing his BBA in International Business in Muscat, said.
Pakistan’s Mohammad Haris bowled out by Oman’s Aamir Kaleem during the Asia Cup Cricket match at Dubai International Cricket stadium in Dubai. | Photo Credit: AP
Meanwhile, Kaleem proudly hailed Bisht as a homegrown talent.
“Aryan Bisht has come from the Under-19s; he is our product. He has played a lot under me. We play together for the same team [Majees Titans] in domestic cricket.”
Kaleem’s nine-year-old daughter is particularly fond of Bisht. “She calls him a mystery bowler,” he chuckled.
Kaleem acknowledged the challenges of coaching and playing, but said his head coach, Duleep Mendis, wants ‘no excuses’.
“Sometimes, our practice or match ends in the evening, and immediately I have to rush to the indoor training facilities for my coaching sessions,” Kaleem said, but he has managed to compartmentalise the two tasks.
“Coaching is my job, and cricket is my passion.”
Published on Sep 17, 2025
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