Back in 2010, that annus horribilis for Pakistan cricket, Hasan Ali’s parents set alight his whites after becoming frustrated with a sporting obsession that appeared to have taken priority over his studies and their dream of him one day becoming a lawyer.
The previous year Hasan and his elder brother had made their own pitch by hand, digging a two-foot deep trench before filling it with concrete and asking a local bricklayer to help smooth it over. Needless to say, this was a young man already set on making it as a professional, just not the kind his mother and father had envisaged.
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