Bravo Spotted Ali Khan at US OPEN

Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers have a new star on the team and it be­came pos­si­ble be­cause of a keen eye of skip­per Dwayne Bra­vo.

Speak­ing at the press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day Bra­vo re­vealed how he spot­ted the im­pres­sive young fast bowler Muham­mad Ali Khan. “I went to the US to play in a crick­et tour­na­ment, the US Open and I saw this young man. I told my broth­er (Dar­ren Bra­vo) who was play­ing on the same team with us that this boy has some tal­ent. I took his con­tact in­for­ma­tion and promised that I will try my best to have him in­clud­ed with us in the TKR set up for the CPL.”

Dwayne, Dar­ren, Ali Khan and Hamza Tariq all TKR men played for the US All-Stars team dur­ing the tour­na­ment 2017. They reached the fi­nal be­fore los­ing to lit­tle known Som­er­set Cav­il­liers at the Cen­tral Broward Re­gion­al Park in Fort. Laud­erdale, USA.

Ali opened the bowl­ing for the US All-Stars on that oc­ca­sion and he im­pressed every­one so much that he got in­clud­ed on the team for the Glob­al T20 league in Cana­da.

Again Ali im­pressed him with his fast, in­ci­sive bowl­ing and from that point, Bra­vo was con­vinced that he want­ed him on the TKR team. Ali is no stranger to the CPL hav­ing been se­lect­ed by the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors for the 2015 and 2016 tour­na­ments. He played one game in two years and in that game he scalped the leg­endary Ku­mar San­gakkara.

Ali went back to Ohio in the US and worked on his skill and game. He kept a close re­la­tion­ship with chair­man of Crick­et Coun­cil USA (CCUSA) Ma­ham­mad Qureshi and this helped him in terms of get­ting op­por­tu­ni­ties to ply his trade and de­vel­op. Ali came through the ranks play­ing at the US Open T20 and this was the on­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty he got to rub shoul­ders with in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers.

His pas­sion for the game is re­mark­able as he nor­mal­ly dri­ves five hours one-way with his trust­ed friend Farhan Ali Khan to play week­end crick­et in Chica­go. Play­ing on As­tro turf wick­ets he has tran­si­tioned nice­ly to turf pitch­es. He has tak­en 15 wick­ets for the TKR this sea­son in im­pres­sive fash­ion.

In the se­mi-fi­nal, on Fri­day night he sent back world boss Chris Gayle for a ‘duck’ in the first over.

Bra­vo said Ali has been piv­otal to his team’s suc­cess: “Ali has played a big part in our suc­cess. He gives us those ear­ly break­throughs and al­so every time I go to him he de­liv­ers. Be­ing an Amer­i­can play­er he does not have too many op­por­tu­ni­ties but now that he has got­ten a chance to show the world what he can do, the fu­ture looks good for him. I am very hap­py for him as he has made the best of this op­por­tu­ni­ty by show­ing the world what he can do.