Mohammad Hafeez

An elegant opening batter and canny offspinner, Mohammad Hafeez spent nearly two decades as one of Pakistan's most versatile cricketers.

First capped in 2003, Hafeez made a fifty in his debut Test and a hundred in his second, both against Bangladesh at home. A 95 against England at The Oval and 57 and a hundred against West Indies followed, but it was another four years before Hafeez made another Test century. By then he had transformed himself into a three-format regular, combining aggression at the top of the order with steady offspin and sharp fielding. His finest stretch in whites came in 2014-15, when he made two hundreds in a row against New Zealand in the UAE, and followed those up with 224 against Bangladesh away.

In his breakthrough year, 2011, Hafeez scored more than 1000 ODI runs and took 30 wickets. He won ten Player-of-the-Match awards that year, and forged a productive Test opening partnership with Taufeeq Umar. Stylish through the off side, Hafeez could look a world-beater, as in his purple patch against Sri Lanka in 2013 when he made three of his 11 career hundreds in four ODIs, or in his unbeaten 57 in the 2017 Champions Trophy final, helping carry Pakistan to a famous win over India.

Hafeez's batting was not without its flaws - particularly against high pace and quality spin - and that meant he often oscillated between indispensable and expendable. What kept him in the frame was his bowling: his flat, accurate offspin was trusted to open the attack in white-ball cricket, and at times, after Saeed Ajmal's suspension, he carried the role of Pakistan's lead spinner. However, Hafeez's action too was reported on multiple occasions, threatening his place in the side.

He still compiled an imposing body of work: close to 13,000 runs and 253 wickets across the international formats, more than 50 Tests, 200 ODIs, and 100 T20Is. He captained Pakistan briefly in T20Is, and was a central figure in their rise as a competitive white-ball side in the 2010s. Towards the end of his career Hafeez became a T20 globetrotter, representing franchises in the PSL, CPL, BPL and elsewhere, bringing experience and tactical nous to the shortest format.

He retired from international cricket in early 2022, after Pakistan's run to the T20 World Cup semi-final the previous year, but played on in the PSL for another season, by which time he was 42.