Ali tips Ishtiaq to shine on debut for county
Whitchurch's Omar Ali is backing team-mate Mohammed Ishtiaq to make a big impact on his Shropshire debut.
Ishtiaq is one of two players, along with Bridgnorth's Tom Weston, who will make their debut for the Cats in their Unicorns Championship curtain raiser against Wales at Pontarddulais.
Ali is backing him to recreate his fine club form for the county side in the forthcoming three-day match, which gets underway tomorrow.
Ishtiaq is currently Whitchurch's top run scorer, having notched 283 in six matches for the Birmingham & District League Division Two strugglers, who were third from bottom of the division this morning.
And Ali said: "He's a very good player. He has got a good head on him as well. As a batsman in the league for the last few years he has been scoring runs quite regularly.
"He is a big lad and he hits the ball quite clean and quite straight, and for Whitchurch he has batted really well. Even though the team hasn't done so good he has shone.
"He can score quite big as well. He is not one that (often) gets to 20 and then gets out. If the gets to 20 he more or less kicks on and scores close to 100 if not better.
"He plays every ball on merit. If it is a really good ball and the bowler's bowling well he will respect it but if he bowls a bad ball he'll punish it."
