A new country and new set of umpires could mean fresh scrutiny for Usman Tariq. But as Pakistan’s late-blooming mystery spinner prepares for his first outing in the T20 Blast, he says he welcomes questions about his action.

Tariq, 30, has signed for the Bears in the Blast, along with Birmingham Phoenix in the Hundred, to continue a remarkable rise. After spending his early 20s working for a car-parts company in Dubai, he watched a biopic of India’s MS Dhoni and decided to pack it in to pursue his cricketing dream.

It has certainly paid off, with a debut in the Pakistan Super League in 2024 leading to opportunities around the world and nine T20i caps for his country. But along the way there have been two rounds of official testing regarding a bowling action that is unquestionably unique.

“I have faced so many naysayers,” says Tariq, freshly arrived at his new home of Edgbaston. “People around me used to tell me ‘Usman, in the UK you might get some tough times because it’s really hard for you to go there and justify your action. The umpires, they will be quite harsh. They’re really strict.’

“I said ‘no, I want to face it. Let’s see what happens. If they feel that I’m having any issue with my action, I’m ready to go to the [testing] lab. I watched a film about [Sri Lanka’s] Muttiah Muralitharan and [he] used to invite people to test him, to show he was not an illegal bowler. The same story goes with me.

“I have been tested two times. It has been cleared within one week. No one told me that you’re having some degrees [of flex] which are making you illegal.”

Despite this, social media tends to be awash with remarks whenever Tariq is bowling, while Australia’s Cameron Green made a pointed “throwing” action after being dismissed by him earlier this year. But like Muralitharan, Tariq is simply unable to straighten his right arm and so gives the illusion of throwing.

In Tariq’s case it comes down to being born with an elbow joint that is split. Here he happily shows off what essentially looks like an arm with two elbows sitting side by side (plus some impossibly long fingers that see him spin the ball hard).

Using these natural attributes, Tariq has developed “around six” deliveries, including a devilish carrom ball that breaks to leg. His release point is something he also mixes up, with low-slung, side-arm delivery that is not dissimilar to Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga. Batters have plenty to think about.

“I used to bowl the carrom ball from childhood,” he says. “We lived in a small house [in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] and there was no space to rotate your arm. So we used to flick the ball around. I took that into tape-ball cricket and gradually learned all those other deliveries like the wrong ‘un and the slider.”

Tariq’s first game for Warwickshire comes at Gloucestershire on Friday as the T20 Blast whirs into life. The country’s original short-form tournament – parent to the leagues that now flood the landscape – is also a bit different this year.

The men’s Blast has taken a haircut, 14 group games down to 12, and two groups of nine are now three of six. Teams play two sides outside of their group, leading to three fixtures in 2026 that have never taken place before: Yorkshire vs Gloucestershire, Sussex vs Leicestershire, and Worcestershire vs Kent.

Another change since Lewis Gregory lifted the trophy for Somerset on a chilly night last September is that the men’s Blast now runs straight through to an earlier Finals Day at Edgbaston on 18 July. The women’s Blast runs in parallel, including 61 double-headers, with its Finals Day at the Oval 24 hours earlier.

The move to get the Blast played in full before the Hundred looks a sound one. Previous Blast seasons had a lengthy gap between the group stage and knockouts, which counties felt lost it some momentum and made signing quality overseas pros for the duration too difficult.

Tariq is a prime example of an overseas player who can now bounce seamlessly from one to the other, not even needing to change home ground as he does so. Whatever the preference of tournament, he will certainly be one to watch.