Azhar Mahmood is a former Pakistani cricketer who rose to fame due to his accomplishments. Azhar Mahmood became a British citizen in 2011 and is now playing as a qualified English cricketer. His cricketing career was not appreciated by his father initially, but Azhar’s performance changed his opinion. Irfan Bhatti, a former Pakistani cricketer, mentored Azhar Mahmood. His one day debit was against India in 1996 at Toronto cricket club.
Azhar was recognized globally for his potential after his test debut against South Africa in 1997 at Rawalpindi cricket stadium. He was able to score a century and a half century and was able to score two more centuries against the South Africans. His main position in the Pakistani team was a medium pacer, but he turned out to be a good batsman too.
Azhar has turned out to be a useful English style seam bowler, who can give his team wickets in the hour of need. He has played county cricket for Surrey and in November 2007 signed a two year deal to play for Kent. In the early 2007, he was summoned to play for the national side for the ODI series against South Africa, but was dropped when the 2007 cricket World Cup was announced.
Recently, Azhar was announced as part of the Auckland Aces as one of the overseas professionals in the 2011/2012 session. In 2012 February, IPL auction, Azhar was sold to King XI Punjab for $200,000, which was double his base price of $100,000. Azhar can be followed on his twitter account twitter.com/AzharMahmood11, while he has no Facebook page.