Sharjeel Khan

Sharjeel Khan was perhaps the only known power-hitter in Pakistan briefly during the mid 2010s, when T20 cricket had modernised but the brand of it Pakistan played hadn't.

An opening batter from Hyderabad, Sharjeel made a name for himself with blitzes in Pakistan's domestic T20 competition. He was picked for the ODI and T20I squads against Sri Lanka in the UAE in December 2013 and duly made his debuts in those formats, scoring his first T20I fifty in his third match - a 25-ball 50 - and following it up with a 61 in his first ODI appearance, a knock that earned him praise from then coach Dav Whatmore, who marked him out as a promising player.

He spent most of the next two years out of the side, however, but returned after strong domestic performances in the build-up to the 2016 T20 World Cup. His lack of athleticism and obvious technical limitations were hard to miss, but he was exceptionally strong square of the wicket on either side, and had the sort of power nearly all of his team-mates at the time lacked. The tournament was disastrous for Pakistan but Sharjeel was their highest scorer, with a strike rate in the 140s, and marked himself out as an ideal player for the format. An ODI series in Australia, where he scored three half-centuries on the trot, only burnished his white-ball credentials. He also played his one Test on that tour.

Sharjeel lost his place after that, and the following year he was one of the primary implicated players in the PSL spot-fixing scandal, found guilty of arranging to play two dot balls in an innings in exchange for money. He was banned for five years, effectively killing his international career. He returned and played a handful of T20Is in 2021, but since then, his career was confined to Pakistan's domestic structure.