OTD in 1974 | Mohammad Yousuf, fourth Christian to play Test cricket for Pakistan, was born

Before converting to Islam in 2005, Mohammad Yousuf was the fourth Christian to represent the Pakistan national cricket team. He represented the Men in Green in all three formats from 1998 to 2010 and also captained the team. The right-hander is regarded as one of the finest batsmen in Pakistan’s history. 

He was born on 27th August 1974 in Lahore, Punjab in a Punjabi Christian family. Hailing from a poor background, Yousuf started playing street cricket with taped tennis balls and wooden planks as his parents could not afford cricket gear. At the age of 12, he joined the Forman Christian College in Lahore, where he honed his game techniques. 

Yousuf made his international debut in February 1998 in the Test format against South Africa. He got off to a poor start and took another year-and-a-half to establish himself with twin knocks of 95 and 75 in Australia. That series laid the foundation for an illustrious career for him. 

A month after his Test debut, Yousuf made his ODI entry and went on to lead Pakistan’s batting unit for several years. He has scored over 9700 runs in 288 ODIs at an average of 41.72 including 15 centuries. He also holds the record for scoring the most runs in ODI matches without being dismissed (405 runs). 

In the longest format of the game, Yousuf has scored over 7000 Test runs at an average of 50-plus with 24 Test centuries. His best year was 2006 when he scored 1788 runs – a world record for most runs scored in a year in Tests at an average of around 100 in Tests. He was also rewarded with ICC’s ‘Cricketer of the Year’ award in 2007. 

Yousuf was the fourth Christian and the fifth non-Muslim overall to play for the Pakistan cricket team, after Wallis Mathias, Antao D’Souza and Duncan Sharp. Notably, he was the first and only non-Muslim to captain the country. He converted to Islam in 2005 after attending regular preaching sessions of the Tablighi Jamaat, Pakistan’s largest non-political religious group.  

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