He won many bat­tles on the field of play and now he is look­ing to win just as many in the court­room, as last Sun­day for­mer West In­dies Un­der-15 cap­tain Za­heer Ali grad­u­at­ed with a Bach­e­lor of Law Hons de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.The left hand­ed bats­man made a pre­ma­ture ex­it from crick­et at the age of 22, which took every­one by sur­prise. He re­mem­bers this de­ci­sion in 2002 :"At the time a num­ber of fac­tors made me put down the crick­et bat. I did not like what was hap­pen­ing with the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport at that pe­ri­od of time. I saw how the ad­min­is­tra­tion treat­ed with some of the play­ers and told my­self I did not want to go that route.

"At the time there was no Stan­ford T20 crick­et or IPL to keep one hop­ing for a se­cure fi­nan­cial fu­ture in stay­ing with the game. I thought to my­self that I need­ed to get away for a while and look to pre­pare my­self for a fu­ture that would give me a sound liv­ing out­side of the game."The for­mer Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) stu­dent left the game and en­tered the po­lice ser­vice, where he is still em­ployed to­day in the Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit - which is the most Elite Unit in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.In 2008, af­ter mak­ing strides with­in the TTPS de­cid­ed to take mat­ters fur­ther and en­rolled at the In­sti­tute of Ter­tiary Tu­tors to read for a de­gree in law. "I re­al­ly loved the field and be­ing in the po­lice ser­vice you are ex­posed to this on a dai­ly ba­sis. I made a de­ci­sion to en­rol in 2008 and al­though it was hard work, I have thrilled to­day that I have my de­gree. I have a lot to thank Ms. Gillian Lucky for, as prin­ci­pal she re­al­ly mo­ti­vat­ed me and as­sist­ed me a lot.

"I want to go on fur­ther to get my LEC in or­der to get call to the bar and work in the field. I am al­so har­bour­ing am­bi­tions of get­ting in­to the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive and hope­ful­ly at a rel­a­tive­ly young age and not the age of 60 or so. I am re­al­ly keen on the law and want to make an im­pres­sion."Ali says his love for the game of crick­et will see him play the game un­til he can't walk any­more but he will on­ly play it at a recre­ation­al lev­el. How­ev­er he ul­ti­mate­ly wants to get in­volve in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the game to give back to a sport that has giv­en him so much.