Haider Ali

A young right-hand batsman, Haider Ali is a fast-rising star in Pakistan and all over the cricketing world. A very orthodox player of the ball just likes his idol “Babar Azam”, Ali is a very elegant driver of the ball.

Haider made his first-class debut playing for Northern in the 2019-20 Quaid-e-Azam trophy on 14 September 2019 against Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and scored an impressive 99 on his debut and made his announcement at the domestic level. After a stellar first-class debut, Ali was drafted by the PSL franchise team Peshawar Zalmi before the 2020 edition of the PSL. The Attock-born cricketer immediately shot to fame in his debut season of the PSL after scoring 239 runs in nine matches and became the third-highest run-scorer for Peshawar Zalmi at just 19 years of age.

Haider Ali made his List A debut just before the PSL when he was named in Pakistan's squad for the 2019 ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup in Bangladesh. Ali played his maiden List A match against Bangladesh on 14th November 2019 and was made the vice-captain for the Pakistan U-19 national team for the 2020 World Cup.

All the grind in T20 leagues and domestic cricket led him to his first national call-up in June 2020 when he was named in the 29 man squad of Pakistan to tour England during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, Haider Ali was one of the three cricketers to test positive for Covid-19 just before the start of the series and was advised to go into isolation. Missing the most part of the series, he finally got a chance to showcase his skills on an international level. Ali made his T20 debut against England on 1st September 2019 and made this quite a memorable one. Ali smashed 54 runs in his maiden T20 match and became the first Pakistani player to score a half-century in his debut T20 match. 

After a few glorifying moments with the bat, he was given an opportunity in the longer format of white-ball cricket and played his maiden ODI match against Zimbabwe on 1st November 2020.

Given his splendid range of shots, and consistency levels, Ali took cricket by a storm but he is yet to make his debut in tests which could be tricky for his aggressive nature of batting. Having many years of cricket ahead of him, this young prodigy could well be the next-generation star of Pakistan Cricket.

(As of March 2021)