A right-arm seam bowler and useful lower-order right-handed batsman, he played one Test match for England in 2003, while also earning 14 ODI caps between 2003 and 2006.

He started his playing career in 1999 at Worcestershire, spending 12 years in the first-team squad, before stints at Hampshire and Lancashire, where he retired in 2015.

Despite several appearances in the Benson & Hedges Cup in April 2000, including an impressive 4–29 on List A debut, Kabir spent most of the first part of that season still in the second team, although by the summer he had pushed his way into the full XI.

He was also selected for the Fourth Test against South Africa at Headingley in August 2003,[2] taking a wicket in his first over (Neil McKenzie, caught behind by Alec Stewart off Kabir's fifth ball).

Nonetheless, England were soundly beaten and the selectors rang the changes, bringing in Steve Harmison and Ashley Giles for Kabir and James Kirtley.

Kabir further demonstrated his batting credentials in September 2003, hitting 92 from 93 balls in a 45-over National Cricket League match against Essex, his maiden limited-overs fifty.

Kabir's performances in early 2005 were unspectacular, but nevertheless he was named in the 14-man squad for that summer's triangular one-day series with Australia and Bangladesh.

Kabir was not in England contention during the 2006 season, and for the winter of 2006–07 he turned out for Rajasthan in the Ranji Trophy along with teammate Vikram Solanki.

[11] On 2 November 2012, Kabir Ali joined Lancashire, who had recently been relegated to the second division of the County Championship, on a two-year contract.