Playing Career
Butt was born in Sialkot, Punjab in 1938. He began his first class career against a touring Marylebone Cricket Club squad on 16 January 1956 while playing for Pakistan Universities. Batting at number three, he scored 35 and 97, falling three short of a debut century thanks to the bowling of Billy Sutcliffe and the catching hands of Ken Barrington. The match ended in a draw. A month later he faced the MCC once more, this time for Punjab: he scored 43 and 18 as the MCC triumphed by an innings and 29 runs. Butt went on to make several successful appearances in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy over the winter of 1956/57, scoring 225 runs at 56.25 including a maiden century of 147 runs. He promptly toured the West Indies but only featured in one first class match before returning to the 1958/59 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy where he had a less successful second season: 73 runs from three matches at 24.33, failing to pass 50. He nevertheless went straight into the Test team for the home series against the West Indies.
Butt played Test cricket between 1959 and 1962. He made his Test debut at Karachi on 20 February 1959. The tourists, bowled out cheaply for 146 in the first innings, conceded a 10-wicket defeat with Butt scoring 14 and 41 not out as a specialist opener. He scored two, 21, 47* and two in the rest of the series. Between 26 March and 4 December he played two more Tests against Australia, scoring a career-best 58 in the second Test. He was then left out of the team until 1962, where he toured England for three Test matches. He struggled, scoring 10, 33, one, six, 10 and six before being dropped.
Following the end of his international career, despite scoring over 1,000 first class runs in the England tour including two centuries, he made only sporadic appearances in Pakistani domestic cricket. He appeared in only three Quaid-e-Azam Trophy matches between 1963 and 1965; an invitational XI match for the Punjab Governor against Pakistan Universities in 1966; Pakistan versus The Rest in 1967; and lastly one appearance in the Ayub Trophy on 15 January 1968 where he scored 40 and 15 for the Lahore Reds.
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