A lightweight, freestyle wrestler, Muhammad Ashraf won his first major international medal for Pakistan at the 1954 Asian Games, when he took home bronze in that event. Two years later he represented his country at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, where he was eliminated in the fourth round. He was eliminated in the first round of the 1958 Asian Games by Olympic champion Emam Ali Habibi of Iran, but won gold at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games that same year. He repeated this feat at the 1962 edition, although by this time he had been coaching the national team for two years. He remained Pakistan’s coach through 1972, at which point he moved to Australia to help coach their national squad, settling there permanently.