NEW DELHI: Max Heingo couldn’t hide his smile as he talked about his mum, Elizabeth Abraham. The 17-year-old pacer from Namibia is sitting along the boundary ropes at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, talking about the long road he has been through from Oshali to Walvis Bay to Windhoek and now India for his first World Cup. “She’s really proud, but she doesn’t actually understand the meaning of a big World Cup. But yeah, she is proud,” Heingo tells this daily.
After all, it was his mother, Elizabeth, who had been the one constant throughout his life. Oshali, a small northern village in the Ohangwena region closer to the Angola border, is where Heingo spent his early years with his grandmother. Soon, Elizabeth moved to Walvis Bay, a coastal city about 883km from Oshali, with Heingo and started her career as a factory worker. That is where he took to cricket at the Nara Primary School. “I started playing cricket in primary school, where one of our coaches invited me to play. So, I joined cricket, and I just got interested in it,” recalls Heingo, who says his dad is self-employed.
When he started, the teenager tried everything in cricket before one coach asked him to try seam bowling and there was no looking back. Wherever he went, Heingo used to bowl and play cricket in the village. With no turf wicket to play on, he did not need spikes, as the teenager used to skid through concrete pitches in the early days. “My first game, I remember it was playing at Walvis Bay school, it’s like a small field. I was U-11 at that time. We were just playing a school tournament and it actually worked out great. Back then, I didn’t really get sponsors or scholarships; we were just on our own. There were a few sponsors that came by the way, not really big sponsors. The sacrifices (of my mum), she paid for transport and all that. She actually inspired me in an unexplainable way,” says Heingo.