Ali Shah - a short biography
MAJOR TEAMS: Rhodesia B (1979/80), Zimbabwe (1982/83-1996/97), Mashonaland (1993/94-1995/96)
John Ward
13-Jan-2000
FULL NAME: Ali Hassimshah Omarshah
BORN: At Salisbury (now Harare), 7 August 1959
MAJOR TEAMS: Rhodesia B (1979/80), Zimbabwe (1982/83-1996/97),
Mashonaland (1993/94-1995/96). Present club team: Universals
KNOWN AS: Ali Shah
BATTING STYLE: Left Hand Bat
BOWLING STYLE: Right Arm Medium Pace
OCCUPATION: Clothing store owner
FIRST-CLASS DEBUT: Rhodesia B v Transvaal B, at Salisbury, 1979/80
TEST DEBUT: Zimbabwe v New Zealand, at Bulawayo Athletic Club, 1
November 1992
ODI DEBUT: Zimbabwe v Australia (World Cup), at Nottingham, 9 June 1983
BIOGRAPHY (January 2000)
Zimbabwe's first official international match was their World Cup
game against Australia in 1983, when they astounded the cricket
world with a 13-run victory. With the recent retirement of Kevin
Curran, none of that team is still active in first-class cricket,
but there is one member who still plays first-league club cricket
in Harare and is still able to turn in match-winning
performances. This is Ali Shah, the first player from outside
the white community to represent the country's first cricket
team, and one who has always brought credit to his team wherever
he has played.
Ali comes from a keen cricketing family, almost an essential for
a top player in this country. His father was the major influence
on his career; he played a great deal of club cricket himself.
He regularly took the young Ali to matches where he himself was
playing, and Ali remembers his job was to prepare his father's
kit, polishing his pads and boots. His father was initially a
member of Universals, for whom Ali has played most of his
cricket, and then moved to Sunrise. Originally there had been
one team for Asian cricketers in Harare, known as Orientals,
before dividing into two. He and Ali played a great deal of
cricket at home, and he gave Ali a sound education in the sport.
"If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have achieved what I did," says
Ali. "He gave me lots of encouragement whenever I was down and
depressed, with regard to professional, and encouraged me not to
lose heart but to keep working at it. We always used to sit down
and chat about cricket - different players and different tactics,
and so on."
Sadly, Mr Shah was to die of bone cancer in 1985, which first
came on two years earlier, robbing him of his ambition to travel
to England and watch Ali play for Zimbabwe in the World Cup.
Ali's younger brother Waqar was also quite talented, and they
played together at Sunrise and Universals, but Waqar lost
interest and his career faded. Ali claims that Waqar was more
talented than he, but lacked the same commitment.
Ali grew up in the days of racial segregation in the country, so
he was limited to his own community for schooling and clubs,
although sporting fixtures were possible against white teams. He
attended the Asian and Coloured schools in Harare, Louis
Mountbatten Primary School and Morgan High School. At Louis
Mountbatten he first won a place in the senior cricket team in
Standard Three, playing with and against boys two years older
than he. He has always been an all-rounder, always bowled his
medium-paced seamers, but for most of his school career he batted
at number four. He remembers taking seven wickets for six runs
in one match against St Michael's, when he also made his highest
score of 45. He won the school Sportsman of the Year prizes in
Standards Three and Five. He also played soccer for the school
team. While still at junior school, Brian Davison came at times
to coach the top Louis Mountbatten players, at the invitation of
the headmaster; recognising Ali's talent, he soon took him aside
for more specialised coaching.
At Morgan High School he captained his age-group teams for his
first three years there before progressing to the school first
team. He feels he had a rather up-and-down career at high
school, but recalls a memorable Under-14 match against St
George's College, one of the country's most powerful school
teams. The opposition contained four Nuffield players, but were
bowled out for 30, with Ali taking four wickets for about 12
runs. Morgan passed their score with two wickets down, and it
was one of the shock results in school cricket. After that Ali
and a couple of other top players were invited to the schools
trials, but they did not make the eventual national side. Ali
remembers some of his contemporaries who briefly played
first-class cricket for Rhodesia or Zimbabwe: Jannie Meyer, Gary
Scott, Peter Geach came to mind.
At the age of 15 he also began to play first-team cricket for
Universals, and found it hard going against such renowned
opponents as Jackie du Preez, Mike Procter, Richie Kaschula, Dave
Houghton and others - which makes him a first-league player for
an unbroken 25 years, 19 of those consecutively as captain. The
Pakistani Test player Younis Ahmed was the club professional at
that time, and he did a great deal for the club, helping to turn
them into an outstanding fielding team that hardly ever missed a
catch. Younis gave Ali and the other youngsters a lot of
encouragement, so he feels that he and the other schoolboys in
the team were able to hold their heads above water playing at
that level.
His father repaid the compliment of Ali's childhood in reverse,
coming to watch Ali play. Mr Shah had finished his career with
Sunrise rather than Universals and would have liked Ali to play
for Sunrise, but when Ali was deciding which of the two clubs to
play for, most of his friends came from Universals, and so he
opted for that. He stayed with Universals until 1980, when he
went to Sunrise for three years with Warwickshire and Barbadian
fast bowler Bill Bourne. They had become friends at Universals
and moved together to Sunrise, although Ali's main reason for
moving was that he felt he was not being utilised to the full as
an all-rounder at Universals and would be able to make better
progress at Sunrise. He took over the captaincy at Sunrise,
which was a challenge that he enjoyed. After three years,
though, he returned to Universals because the first-league format
had been changed: there were two sections, Sunrise was to be in
the B Section, and the selectors advised him that he should play
in the A Section to have a better chance of playing for the
country.
When he first played club cricket at the age of 15, Ali was put
in low in the order at number ten, but he forced his way up to
number six, the first five batsmen at Universals being very
strong. The lower order was weak, though, and Ali often found
himself trying to stave off collapses, and playing some good
innings while he was at it. Younis Ahmed thought that, as Ali
was able to hold an end up and had a good defence, it would be
better for him to open, and so he did. This was the position for
which he was first selected for Zimbabwe, although the country
generally played him lower in the order later in his career.
Immediately before independence, after consistent rather than
outstanding league performances, Ali made his first-class debut,
for Zimbabwe-Rhodesia B against Transvaal B at Harare Sports
Club. Batting number 8, he scored only 2 and was not given the
chance to bowl in a rain-affected match. He says he was picked
as an opener, but Jack Heron and Kevin Arnott opened instead.
It was another three years before Ali played first-class cricket
again, and this time it was for the full national side, against
the touring Young Australian team, immediately before the World
Cup. Opening the batting with Jack Heron, he scored 42 and 55 in
his first match, and then 13 and 105 in his second. The Young
Australians he found a completely new experience; they were "very
aggressive, very verbal, and we hadn't played cricketers like
that before. It was hard, tough cricket; we got abused on the
field, but it was good, because it really woke us up." Their two
pace bowlers, Rod McCurdy and Mike Whitney, were faster and more
hostile than anything Ali had faced before, and his scores, when
so many other Zimbabweans were struggling, do him tremendous
credit. He was dropped on 67 while fighting his way to a
century, mistiming a hook, and was beaten many times, but sheer
guts and determination saw him through. "I like challenges and I
took them on," he says, and his deeds proved that these were no
empty words. His superb innings, with little support until
captain Duncan Fletcher came in to score 56, enabled Zimbabwe to
set the tourists 310 to win and bowl them out for 216.
With a good 68 in the final one-day match, although Zimbabwe
lost, Ali won a place in the World Cup team for England in 1983.
He went out to open the innings with Grant Paterson in the first
match against Australia, and they shared an opening stand of 55,
of which Ali scored 16 before being caught by wicket-keeper Rod
Marsh off Dennis Lillee. He also caught Kim Hughes in the square
leg area before the Australian captain had scored, and Zimbabwe
went on to record a sensational victory. It was a great
experience for Ali and indeed all the players, rubbing shoulders
with the most famous cricketers in the world. He had little
success with the bat, though, and after scoring 8 and 2 against
India and West Indies he lost his place.
Back in Zimbabwe, he was selected to play the touring Young West
Indies team, but scored only 37 runs in the two first-class
matches. He attributes his failure to his efforts, and those of
some of his team-mates, to change their techniques when facing
the express pace of Malcolm Marshall, Wayne Daniel and Hartley
Alleyne. They had seen certain overseas batsmen moving their
feet back and across before the bowler delivered, and tried to
copy this, but with mixed success; certainly it did not suit Ali.
After this was a tour to Sri Lanka, in which virtually every
day's play was badly affected by rain, and Ali's main memory is
of the crowd stoning their bus after a one-day match had been
abandoned after a torrential downpour at lunchtime and the crowd
had not been informed. As the Zimbabweans tried to leave by bus,
a mob of irate spectators threw stones at their bus, a
frightening experience. Ali did little on the tour even when the
weather permitted play, and in fact there followed several
seasons where he failed to reach 50 in a first-class match,
although selected fairly regularly. He bowled, on the face of
it, usefully, but failed to take wickets; after the 1986/87
season his career bowling average was 238 and his only wicket was
that of David Boon during the Young Australian tour, for 148,
brilliantly stumped by Dave Houghton standing up to the stumps.
Part of the reason for Ali's failure to fulfil the rich promise
shown against the Young Australians was that he started a new
business in 1985, and for years afterwards found it taking a
great deal of his time. He opened a boutique and found it very
difficult and time-consuming to start with. For several years he
was unable to afford a manager to allow him much time off, and so
his cricket suffered. Cricket in Zimbabwe was still almost
entirely an amateur sport, and Ali had to put his livelihood
first; "cricket didn't put food on my plate," he says. Even in
later years when he had a manager running the shop, business
still tended to interfere, and leading Zimbabwean players often
said that Ali played his best cricket on tour when they could get
him away from the distractions of business.
Almost throughout his career Ali was the only Asian - in fact,
until the nineties the only player not of European descent - in
the side, but he did not find it a problem. He never had any
difficulty either racially or culturally with any of the white
Zimbabwean players, a tribute both to the Zimbabwean players and
to Ali himself. In the 1983 World Cup he shared a room with
Kevin Curran, which some would consider a recipe for potential
disaster whoever the player, but Ali got on well with him, and
also made particular friends with Grant Paterson and Iain
Butchart. He also found particular help from senior players like
John Traicos and Kevin Arnott. On the 1985 tour to England he
shared a room with Graeme Hick.
He also played in the ICC competition in England in 1986, which
Zimbabwe again won, and in the World Cup of 1987/88, but without
much success. On the latter tour he was one of the side's
leading seamers, but only through injury: Peter Rawson, Kevin
Curran and Eddo Brandes all had injury problems, so Malcolm
Jarvis, Iain Butchart and Ali had much work to do with the ball.
Ali took five wickets, second only to off-spinner John Traicos,
and his average of 35 was second only to Curran. Conceding only
4.5 runs an over, he did his job well. He had found a good
temporary manager for his shop while he was away on tour, but his
cricket at home was still badly affected.
Ali lost his place in the team in 1988/89 after continued
disappointing form, but won it back as an opener the following
season. The opposition was England A, and for the first time
Zimbabwe were playing five-day cricket, in the wake of a positive
ICC decision made with a view to enabling the country to prepare
more effectively for possible Test cricket. The five-day matches
were noted mainly for some very slow batting by both sides, but
Ali's form, opening the innings, was a revelation. In the first
match he played some superb attacking drives to take him quickly
into the forties, after which he played more sedately before
eventually being out for 98. He did not do so well again, but
did enough to win a place in the team to tour England and play in
the ICC Trophy in Holland in 1990.
The highlight of that tour for Ali personally was an innings of
185 against Gloucestershire at Bristol. The county attack
contained David Lawrence, Kevin Curran (who had now left Zimbabwe
permanently) and David Graveney, all of whom played international
cricket of one sort or another. He was disappointed not to reach
200, but had been told that a declaration was imminent and hit
out, to be caught on the long-on boundary off Graveney. His
innings gave Zimbabwe the advantage, and they just failed to
force home victory.
After this tour Ali remained a fringe player, irregular in the
national side, until Zimbabwe were granted Test status in 1992.
The news came as a surprise to him as he had never expected that
decision to be taken, but he thought, "Things will have to change
now and we will have to become a lot more professional." He
realised this would create difficulties for the majority, like
himself, who were still amateurs, as they could no longer expect
to have just one or two hours of practice a day and run a
business as well. The initial squad, of which Ali was a member,
began by organising lunchtime practices as well as evening
practices, making a total of about three hours a day. They were
trained by the Zimbabwean rugby player Ian Robertson, and also
went to the gymnasium in the evening after nets; Malcolm Jarvis
also helped Robertson, and the national players reached new
levels of fitness.
Ali should have played in Zimbabwe's inaugural Test match,
against India, although now as a middle-order all-rounder, but at
practice the evening before the match put his foot in a hole and
sprained his ankle, requiring his replacement Gary Crocker to
make an overnight car journey from Bulawayo to reach the ground
in time. He was fit for the Test against New Zealand in Bulawayo
that immediately followed, when he scored 28 runs and took the
wicket of opener Mark Greatbatch.
Having a manager for his shop enabled him to make the brief trip
to India at the end of the season, for three one-day
internationals and a Test match at Delhi. He played in all the
matches except for the second one-day international, but without
much success. He remembers that India were under a lot of
pressure to win that Test, after having the worst of a draw in
Zimbabwe in the inaugural Test, and there was some controversy
about the umpiring, in those days before third-country umpires,
with seven lbw decisions being given against Zimbabwean batsmen
in the match, helping India to an innings victory. Ali was one
of them, in the second innings.
The next season Ali went on tour to India again for a one-day
tournament, playing in two of the four matches with useful rather
than notable performances. The team went on to Pakistan for a
major tour, but several of Zimbabwe's amateurs could not afford
any further time off and had to return home. This included Ali,
as his manager was leaving. After this it seems that the
selectors decided to stick to those players who were available
all the time, because some of those who went home - notably John
Traicos and Kevin Arnott - were never selected again, while Ali,
Andy Waller and Iain Butchart were not selected again for a long
time.
With the Logan Cup competition now first-class, Ali was still
able to play this level of cricket, and he scored an unbeaten 200
for Mashonaland against Mashonaland Under-24 in 1994/95.
Although he still attended national practices he was still not
selected, and the selectors made no effort to communicate with
him or give him any reasons for his omission or any
encouragement. Since his appointment as a selector late in 1999,
Ali decided that he would try to do a better job of communication
in his duties. However, he was selected as an experienced player
in the Zimbabwe A side that toured saf briefly in 1995/96.
Ali finally returned to Test cricket almost four years later,
when he had enjoyed a superb all-round league season and was
chosen to tour Sri Lanka in 1996/97. First of all there was a
quadrangular one-day series; Ali opened in the first match and
scored 41, despite Zimbabwe slumping to 56 for five at one stage,
and was rewarded with a demotion to number ten in the second
match and omission from the third! His bowling was scarcely
used.
After being omitted from the first of the two Tests, he was
brought in for the second, when he made a superb fighting 62 in
five hours in difficult circumstances and without a reliable
partner at the other end. He had also sprained a shoulder diving
for a ball in the field, which caused him a lot of pain and
restricted his strokeplay. The spinners were in control, but
Ali, as a left-hander, had an advantage against Muralitharan as
he was better able to pad up safely to his sharply turning
off-breaks. He concentrated on the sweep, finding most other
strokes too difficult with his painful shoulder. Other batsmen,
on this slow turner, were at a serious disadvantage if they did
not use their feet, crowded as they were by close fielders
waiting for the bat-pad chance, but the left-handed Ali was able
to get away with a lot of pad play.
This was actually Ali's final first-class match. With the return
of Dave Houghton, whose coaching commitments with Worcestershire
had made him unavailable for Sri Lanka, Ali was not required for
Pakistan or against the English touring team. So he quietly
faded away from first-class cricket, although still playing
regular club cricket with success, as he is still doing. The
1999/2000 season may be his last, at the age of 40, because he
has no wish to keep younger players out of the side, but he has
not yet made up his mind. He still enjoys playing club cricket,
although finding it more difficult as he gets older, and he
enjoys passing on his experience to younger players. He has
thoughts of getting more involved in coaching in the future.
His best memories are not of individual performances, but of the
1998/99 season, his last as captain, when Universals achieved the
treble, winning three out of the four club competitions available
to them. On a personal note, he remembers a fine innings of 196
that season against Bulawayo Athletic Club. He feels, though,
that the standard of league cricket has dropped since his early
days, especially when the national players are unavailable.
Ali is perhaps an example of a fine player who never quite
fulfilled his potential, due mainly to the difficulty of playing
as an amateur in an increasingly professional world. One cannot
speculate on how his career might have gone if Zimbabwe had been
granted Test status ten years earlier and he had had the
opportunity to play as a professional, but it would surely have
been more productive than it eventually was. When he does
finally call it a day, it will be with sadness, for he has done
much for the game, both as a player and as a man.