cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
er who played in 19
Test matches Test match in some sports refers to a sporting contest between national representative teams and may refer to:
* Test cricket
* Test match (indoor cricket)
* Test match (rugby union)
* Test match (rugby league)
* Test match (association football)
...
and 50
One Day International
A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...
s from 1993 to 1996.
A right-hander, he has the relatively uncommon statistic of having a higher ODI than Test batting average. Strong through the covers and point, Ali was also exceptionally good at playing hook and pull shots against the fast bowlers. Appointed as National Pakistan Cricket Coach in 2016, after world twenty 2016 in India.
Domestic career
Ali was a successful junior cricketer, at one time holding the record for most hundreds in a Karachi zonal league season.
International career
He debuted for Pakistan aged 22 in March 1993, playing both ODI and Test cricket in a tour of the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
. For similarities and batting styles and temperament, he was initially seen as the one who'd take the mantle of Pakistani batting from Great Javed Miandad. He went on to play in 19 Tests but made just the one Test century, against New Zealand in 1993–94.
An aggressive risk-taker, he was a regular in the Pakistani ODI side for a while in the mid-1990s. On 5 November 1993 he scored the then second-fastest
One Day International
A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...
century in history, with a 67 ball effort against the West Indies at Sharjah. He took 5 more balls as compared to the record of Mohammad Azharuddin who took 62 balls. Basit Ali finished on 127 not out. Waqar Younis was acting captain in that match.