The boy from Sambhal who nearly lost his arm | Mohsin Khan’s Journey from despair to IPL dominance

Few months later, he could not lift that same left arm to comb his hair.

Doctors at Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai told him something no athlete wants to hear. The artery in his bowling shoulder had swollen and blocked completely. Blood clots had turned his arm numb. If he had waited one more month, they would have cut the arm off.

This is the story of how a boy from Uttar Pradesh lost everything, kept going anyway, and came back to bowl a maiden over to a fifteen-year-old prodigy in 2026. It is not a story about cricket. It is a story about waiting.

The Year That Made No Sense

The 2022 IPL season was supposed to belong to the big names. Lucknow had just entered the league. They had KL Rahul as captain. They had spent crores on overseas stars. And then they picked Mohsin Khan for twenty lakh rupees. He was uncapped. He was tall. He was left-arm. In the auction, that is usually just roster filling.

Except he started bowling in the powerplay. Then he bowled at the death. Then he took four for sixteen against Delhi Capitals and sent back David Warner and Rishabh Pant in the same match. The ball climbed from a good length. It hit the bat handle. It went to fielders. Batsmen who usually hit sixes for fun were blocking him out.

The numbers were strange. An economy of 5.96 for a fast bowler in T20 cricket is like finding water in a desert. Since 2014, the game had moved toward bigger bats, shorter boundaries, and hitters who swing from the first ball. Bowlers are supposed to bleed runs. That is the deal. Mohsin refused the deal.

He did this not with mystery spin or trickery. He did it with height. At six-foot-three, his release point sat nearly 8 feet above the ground. When the ball pitched on a good length, it did not sit up nicely for the drive. It climbed toward the ribs. Toward the throat.

Right-handers who tried to pull found the ball on their gloves. Those who tried to drive found the edge.

His childhood coach, Badruddin Siddiqui, who also trained Mohammed Shami, had watched Mohsin grow from a thin thirteen-year-old into this giant in less than a year. The body changed. The action changed. And suddenly, Lucknow had a weapon no one else knew how to use.

But T20 cricket does not let you keep secrets for long.

When the Body Says No

After the 2022 season ended, Mohsin felt a strange cold in his left arm. Not pain. Cold. Numbness. He thought it was a shoulder niggle. Cricketers live with niggles. They ice it. They rest. They move on.

This one did not move on.

The diagnosis came like a bad dream. A vascular aneurysm. The main artery supplying blood to his bowling arm had blocked entirely. Clots had formed. The nerves were pressing against bone.

He could not straighten the arm. He could not feel his fingers properly. And the doctors were clear. One more month of delay, and the tissue dies. Then comes the saw.

Imagine that. You are twenty-three. You have just had the best season of your life. And now a surgeon is telling you that your bowling arm might become a stump.

The surgery happened in late 2022. They removed the clots. They repaired the artery. Then began the long wait. Four hundred and fifty days of waking up not knowing if the arm would ever come back to what it was.

He admitted later that he gave up hope. Not dramatically. Quietly. The way you give up on a rainy day when you stop waiting for the sun.

Most franchises would have moved on. The IPL is a business. Players get injured, contracts get torn up, new boys arrive. But Lucknow kept him. Sanjiv Goenka, the franchise owner, paid for the best doctors and kept the contract alive.

When Mohsin sat at home in Amroha wondering if his career was over, his salary still came. That does not happen often in this league. Goenka later said he wanted people with the right mindset. Maybe he just recognized that some investments are not about the balance sheet.

The Farmhouse and the Mentor

During the 2020 lockdown, when the world stopped, Mohammed Shami opened his farmhouse in Amroha to a few local boys. The place spreads across 150 bighas. It has turf wickets. It has a gym. It has silence.

Shami, who had himself climbed out of small-town obscurity to become India’s finest seam bowler, saw something in Mohsin.

One evening, Mohsin walked out of the gym flexing. Shami looked at him and said, “Mohsin Miyan, the gym will make you look good. It will not make you bowl better.”

That sentence stuck. Shami did not believe in muscles for show. He believed in the hard length. In repetition. In bowling until your shoulder burns and then bowling some more.

He taught Mohsin that height is useless if you do not know where the ball is going. That bounce is a weapon only when it comes with discipline.

Badruddin Siddiqui watched both his students. Shami, the master. Mohsin, the apprentice. Both from the same district. Both fighting the same battle against the idea that fast bowlers cannot come from places like Moradabad and Sambhal.

In 2026, the poetry finally arrived. Lucknow Super Giants, the home-state franchise, put both men in the same attack. Shami and Mohsin. Teacher and student. On the same side. At the Ekana Stadium. You cannot write that script and expect people to believe it.

The Maiden and the Boy

Match thirty-two of the 2026 season. Rajasthan Royals. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is fifteen years old. The world is talking about him. He has hit legendary bowlers for sixes. He fears nothing. He opens the batting with the arrogance of youth, which is the best kind of arrogance because it does not know any better.

Mohsin Khan is bowling the fourth over.

The first ball is on a good length outside off. Dot. The second is back of a length, straightening. Dot. The third one was fullish, tucked to the leg side but straight to the fielder. Dot. The fourth is full, punched down the pitch. Dot. The fifth is short, rising, beating the outside edge. Dot.

Five balls. Zero runs. The crowd knows something is happening. Sooryavanshi knows something is happening. He is fifteen. He has never faced this before. A left-armer who is not trying to take his wicket with pace alone but is simply choking the air out of the over.

The sixth ball is full, targeting off stump. Sooryavanshi tries to break free. He miscues. The ball loops in the air, Caught. Wicket maiden.

In a league where even good bowlers go for ten an over, Mohsin Khan had bowled a maiden to the most exciting young batter on the planet. Commentators called it a masterclass. It was simpler than that. It was a man who had nearly lost his arm reminding everyone what patience looks like.

The What If

Now the question starts. Can he play for India?

India has wanted a left-arm fast bowler for years. Arshdeep Singh swings it. Khaleel Ahmed has height. But Mohsin brings something different. He brings that steep bounce. He brings an economy rate that makes captains relax.

The BCCI will watch his workload. They must. An artery once blocked does not forgive neglect. But the mind is there. The skill is there. The mentor is there.

His father, Multan Khan, retired from the Uttar Pradesh Police and gave his son to cricket. Not to the fancy academies of Mumbai or Delhi. To Badruddin Siddiqui in Sambhal. To the dust. To the long road. That road has now reached the IPL. The next turn could be an India cap.

Mohsin Khan is not a miracle. He is a fast bowler from Uttar Pradesh who grew too tall too fast, nearly lost his arm to a bad artery, and spent 450 days learning how to comb his hair again before he could think about bowling a yorker.

But that is exactly why the story matters. Cricket is full of numbers. Economy rates. Strike rates. Auction prices. Sometimes it takes a blocked artery to remind us that behind every stat is a body. Behind every body is a person waiting. And behind every wait is someone who decided not to give up.

In 2022, he was a number that made no sense. In 2026, he is something simpler. He is proof that the ball can still bounce back.