Basit Ali- Pakistan
He was hailed as the next Javed Miandad of Pakistan cricket but guess, how that panned out. Basit Ali, who played 19 Teste and 50 ODIs, made his debut in 1993 and he was immediately hailed as the next big thing in Pakistan cricket.
One year later, Basit Ali, along with wicket-keeper Rashid Latif shocked the world when they announced their retirement, alleging that senior players in the team were embroiled in match-fixing. Both cricketers eventually returned but Ali’s career could not go past 1996 when he was just 26. Years later Basit Ali revealed how the internal politics in the team led to his career getting cut-short and why he was compared to Javed Miandad in the initial stages.
“There was a conspiracy to remove Javed Miandad from the team (round 1993). That’s why I was compared with. Honestly, I was not even one percent of what Miandad was. I used to bat at number 4 and when Miandad was removed, they shifted me to number 6. At number 4 , I used to average 55 and after they shifted me to 6, my performance went down. They knew that at that position, I would hardly ever get to bat. They gave me slow poison,” Basit Ali told Times of India.
