From cricket bat to shotgun: Mairaj’s journey
There was a time when Mairaj Ahmad Khan dreamed of making it big with a cricket bat. More than three decades later, the 50-year-old is still chasing sporting glory — only now with a shotgun firmly in his grip.
From Khurja in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district to shooting ranges around the world, Mairaj’s journey has taken him places he could never have imagined when he first stepped into the world of sport. At the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, he will be the second-oldest member of the Indian contingent, behind equestrian Shruti Vora, and will compete at his fourth continental games.
Yet, shooting was never supposed to be his destiny. “I was playing cricket when it all started in 1994,” Mairaj recalls.
A left-handed top-order batter who usually came in at Number 3, he represented Uttar Pradesh in the CK Nayudu and Vinoo Mankad Trophy competitions before joining Jamia Millia Islamia in 1996. He played inter-university cricket and also featured in the Vizzy Trophy.
Among his university teammates was a young Virender Sehwag. “I have played with Sehwag and done a lot of nets with him. He played just one match with us because he went on to play for India that year,” Mairaj recalled. But while cricket was his passion, shooting was slowly beginning to pull him in.
Guns were not unfamiliar to Mairaj. His family, he says, were zamindars and had always kept firearms. As a youngster, he had also tried air rifle and .22 rifle shooting and even competed in a district-level three-position event in Bulandshahr, where he won Rs 30 in prize money.
“I bought a cricket bat with that money,” he said, laughing.
It was after he moved to Delhi that fate nudged him towards a different sporting path. Mairaj would often spend weekends with a cousin who was a Group Captain in the Indian Air Force and a senior officer with the Air Force Sports Control Board. One day, he noticed his cousin cleaning his gun. “I asked him where he was going. He said there was a competition at the Delhi range... the Nationals at Karni Singh Shooting Range. So I went there out of curiosity,” he said. What he saw fascinated him.
The range was buzzing with some of India’s leading shooters, including Asian Games shotgun gold medallist Raja Randhir Singh, Olympian Gurbir Singh — father of former trap world champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu — and Zorawar Singh Sandhu’s father, who was also a prominent figure in the sport. “I felt very fascinated by the sport,” he says.
The idea of competing himself took firmer shape a year later. In 1995, Mairaj’s family was running a restaurant at Pragati Maidan, now Bharat Mandapam, along with two kiosks and a kebab outlet called ‘Hamari Gali’.
One day, some relatives walked into the restaurant after returning from a shooting Pre-Nationals competition. “They told me they had competed and qualified. I made up my mind that from the next year I would compete. So, they entered my name,” he said.
