Out-of-favour Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan ties the knot

It goes without saying that weddings of Indian cricketers often attract high eyeballs after the Bollywood celebrities. Weddings for Indian cricketers are always a high-profile affair.

It doesn’t matter whether a cricketer is in the current national team or not. Regardless of it, fans and media troops would invariably make a beeline to the event the moment they sniff it.

File Photo of Yusuf Pathan (Getty Images)

No wonder, cricketers are wary about the media and fan circus and often look for ways to keep them at bay.

And the latest Indian cricketer to jump on to the ‘marriage’ bandwagon’ is Yusuf Pathan. The man from Baroda got hitched to his fiancee Afreen, at a family function in Mumbai on Tuesday.

The 30-year-old big-hitting right-handed batsman got engaged to Afreen in a private ceremony at his farmhouse in Nadiad, 60 kms from Vadodara, last year.

It was an arranged marriage, which was fixed after both families put their stamp of approval. Afreen was born and brought up in Mumbai and practices physiotherapy in Vadodara.

Pathan, who has in the wilderness for some time, has appeared in 57 one-day internationals and has scored 810 runs. He has played 22 T20 matches and notched up 236 runs.

He makes all the right news through his stints in the Indian Premier League now that he is cooling his heels outside the national team.

Only recently, he was playing in the Syed Mushtaq Ali West Zone T20 tournament in Ahmedabad and made a conscious effort to sidestep any talk on his upcoming marriage.

The Pathan family will host a grand reception soon. The reception is likely to be held either at a posh hotel in Vadodara or at their farmhouse in Nadiad.

With Pathan out of the national team, he would be hoping that the ‘nuptial luck’ may just do the trick for him.

He is best remembered for the 2010-11 India-South Africa one-day series held in South Africa.

Pathan, batting at number seven, slammed a magnificent 59 off only 50 balls at Cape Town, an innings packed with six fours and three sixes, which helped India win the third ODI by two wickets.

The burly batsman came out with another blinder in the fifth and final ODI at the SuperSport Park in Centurion, where he belted 100 off only 68 balls en route to scoring 104 off 70 balls, punctuated with eight fours and as many sixes, although India lost the match by the D/L method.