Rohan Mustafa
Rohan Mustafa – A Pakistani All-rounder Who Plays For The UAE
Rohan Mustafa is a Pakistan-born cricket all-rounder who represents the UAE on the international stage and is a former captain of the national team. He became the first Emirati cricketer to break into the ICC top ten in any format. He is the only cricketer to have repeated the incredible feat achieved by Viv Richards and Paul Collingwood: scoring a century and taking five wickets in a single innings.
Rohan Mustafa: Biography and Sporting Career
Rohan Mustafa was born on October 7, 1988, in Kohat, in north-western Pakistan. From childhood, Rohan was crazy about cricket, and his father, Mustafa Kamal, the owner of a successful car business, fully backed his passion.
The collapse of Pakistan’s economy by the end of the 1990s, sanctions and the fall of the rupee, put Mustafa Kamal’s business under serious pressure. Realising that political turbulence would inevitably push the country towards a change of regime, which indeed happened in 1999, Kamal moved his family to the safe and prosperous Emirates, settling in Sharjah. Having arrived in the UAE at the age of ten, the future sportsman, largely thanks to his father, was enrolled at the Sharjah Cricket Academy, one of the region’s leading institutions for developing young talent.
Rohan has repeatedly mentioned that his father dreamed of seeing him play for Pakistan and supported him in every possible way. After receiving his fifth Player of the Tournament award at a Ramadan tournament in Abu Dhabi, Rohan Mustafa said the following in an interview with Gulf News:
“My father Mustafa Kamal guided me to cricket with a dream of wanting to see me play international cricket. He used to always tell me to work hard and that one day I will represent Pakistan. […] I fulfilled his dream of playing international cricket by getting selected to the UAE team and even played in the World Cup.”
Sadly, Mustafa Kamal passed away suddenly in July 2005, when Rohan was 15 years old. After that, the family ran into financial difficulties, and for a while Rohan even stepped away from cricket. Fortune smiled on him in the shape of Adil Mirza, the CEO and founder of Phoenix Medicine, whose team Rohan had previously played for, gave him a job and got him back into a cricket academy. Having come through the entire UAE youth cricket system and shown a very mature game in local club tournaments and junior national team matches, including his performance at the Asian Cricket Council Under-19 Elite Cup, where he picked up two Man of the Match awards, Rohan Mustafa finally earned his long-awaited call-up to the senior UAE squad.
Mustafa first took the field for the national team in an ODI against Scotland in February 2014. A month later, he was included in the main squad for a T20I against the Netherlands, and after taking part in the ICC World Twenty20 later that year, he became vice-captain of the national side.
After facing a court-imposed entry ban over “draft evasion”, Rohan Mustafa left for Pakistan. His return became possible only after national team coach Aaqib Javed stepped in. In the end, the ban was overturned, and the player was included in the national squad for the 2015 World Cup. He did not become the team’s main star at that tournament, but he put in steady performances, which helped him nail down his place in the playing XI. That trust from the management later led to his appointment as captain of the national team in ODI and T20I cricket in 2018 and made him one of the most recognisable cricketers in UAE history. Below is a list of his main achievements:
- 2017: became the first UAE player in history and the third player in the world to score a century, 109 runs, and take 5 wickets in the same ODI match;
- 2018: his brilliant all-round display helped the UAE national team win the ICC World Cricket League Division Two tournament and retain ODI status;
- 2019: the ICC named him a key player for the UAE squad at the ICC T20 World Cup Qualifier, where he took 11 wickets in 8 matches;
- 2020: became one of ten UAE players to receive the country’s first-ever full professional contracts;
- 2022: became the first UAE cricketer to break into the top 10 of the ICC world rankings, reaching 7th place among T20I all-rounders;
- 2023: cemented his status as the best bowler in UAE history by total wickets taken across ODI and T20I formats, moving past Mohammad Naveed and Ahmed Raza.
At present, Rohan Mustafa is not a regular player for the national team. UAE officials are increasingly leaning on younger talents, such as Aayan Afzal Khan. However, thanks to Rohan’s huge experience, he is still brought in as an adviser. Overall, the cricketer is living the typical life of a 37-year-old veteran: he plays plenty of T20 franchise cricket around the world, earns from it, and remains a legend of Emirati cricket. He is still in good nick and fully capable of turning in a standout performance. You do not have to look far for an example: playing for GHK Properties, Rohan cracked 120 runs off 99 balls and picked up yet another Player of the Match award at the 50th anniversary Bukhatir T20 League tournament on April 20, 2026.
Rohan Mustafa: Personal Life and Interesting Facts
As for the athlete’s personal life, like most devout Muslim cricketers, he holds strict, conservative views and prefers to keep the details of his family life away from the public eye. Open biographies and profile articles do not provide reliable confirmation of a marriage or children. However, some sources claim that he is married to a woman named Sobia. Their wedding reportedly took place in late 2016 or early 2017, and the couple are said to be raising a daughter. Still, it is better to treat this unconfirmed information with a healthy degree of scepticism.
To round off the portrait of the player, here is a selection of interesting facts and his playing statistics:
- Mustafa considers former UAE captain Khurram Khan to be his idol;
- After his father’s death, Rohan began doing charity work – a direct continuation of the values his father had instilled in him, as he had also helped those in need;
- The sportsman is a big fan of expensive cars and watches.
Rohan Mustafa is fairly private on social media, and the easiest way to follow him is through his Instagram: @rohaanofficial88. That is where fresh updates about the cricketer’s performances appear most often.
