Misbah ul Haq had to wait for his international career to truly take off and since then, he has seldom looked back. His debut for Pakistan came in 2001 but only played a handful of ODIs and not a single Test between 2003 and 2007. He first took over the Pakistan Test captaincy amidst the axing of Salman Butt from the position after his allegations of spot fixing in 2011. It was also the year when he reached unprecedented levels of consistency with the bat and took his team out of the depths of the scandal. He led Pakistan to a 3-0 whitewash of then world no.1 England in 2012 at their own backyard. Misbah has since then defied his age and led Pakistan to the summit of the ICC Test rankings.