Fawad Alam has called time on his 15-year Pakistan tenure as an out-of-favor batsman. Alam, who will turn 37 in October, will appear as a ‘local’ player for the Chicago Kingsmen in Minor League Cricket T20, a tournament that complements the recently concluded Major League Cricket (MLC) tournament. He joins a lengthy list of Pakistani athletes who have relocated to the United States, including Sami Aslam, Hammad Azam, Saif Badar, and Mohammad Mohsin.
Although he made his white ball debut for Pakistan in 2007, Alam’s presence in the Pakistan dressing room has been sporadic at best. Despite accumulating mountains of runs with an average of 55 in the domestic circuit and scoring a century on his Test debut in 2009, he was omitted a few Tests later and played his next Test after an 11-year absence. In 2020, Alam’s career received a new lease on life, and he established himself briefly in the Test squad. In his third game after his revival, he validated his selection with a hundred in difficult conditions in New Zealand. He added hundreds against South Africa, West Indies, and Zimbabwe to his total.
Early in 2022, Alam’s unconventional technique was exposed against Australia. In July 2022, he was eventually released after failing in a Test against Sri Lanka, despite scoring 33 runs in four innings on the most forgiving pitches. He was a member of Pakistan’s 2009 T20 World Cup-winning team, but after the championship he only played 11 more games in the format. He participated in 19 Tests, 38 One-Day Internationals, and 24 Twenty20 Internationals for Pakistan, scoring 5 Test centuries and a single ODI century against Sri Lanka in the 2014 Asia Cup.
Alam’s non-selection in Tests coupled with his unconventional technique polarized opinions in Pakistan cricket for nearly a decade. Former players and the media vociferously demanded his selection as he piled up runs by the boatload in the Qaid-e-Azam trophy season after season. Over the course of 19 years and 201 first-class matches, he accumulated over 14,000 runs in domestic cricket.
