Nasir Jamshed

An aggressive left-hander from Lahore, Nasir Jamshed was born on December 6, 1989. He started playing cricket at a very tender age and made his first-class debut just at the age of 15. He was then roped into the Under-19 team and he made 204 on his debut against Sri Lanka.

He started off with a bang with the senior team as well. Given an opportunity to debut against Zimbabwe in January 2008 Nasir Jamshed smashed a 48-ball 61 opening the innings and he also bagged the Man of the Match award. His second game was even better in terms of run scoring, this time a 74 against the same opposition.

He was a regular with the side for a while before losing place on poor form in August 2009. Jamshed made a comeback into the national side for the Asia Cup in 2012. And ever since then he has been absolutely fantastic. He scored 112 against India in the tournament and then repeated the feat a couple of times few games later, against the same opposition. It is an astonishing fact that all his hundreds have come against India and he went onto score 241 runs in just three games in the 2012/13 bilateral series between the two sides.

Good run in the 50-over format also earned him a ticket for the Test series against hosts South Africa. He could not manage much in the two games that he played, with 46 being the best score. Those were the only two games that he has played in his career so far.

The selectors invested in him after his good show in the away series against India and he was part of almost every ODI that Pakistan played. However, after a string of poor scores, he found himself out of the side after returning from South Africa in November 2013. Since then, he has not been recalled for national duty and hence is playing for domestic sides, including Lahore Lions.

After making his T20 debut against Australia prior to the 2012 World T20 in Sri Lanka, Nasir Jamshed made valuable contributions in multi-nation event at the top of the order and also made a gritty fifty against Australia. However, the selectors ignored him for the 2014 T20 World Cup in Bangladesh.

by Ramakrishnan - March 2014