Yusuf Pathan was born in Baroda, Gujarat, to a Gujarati Pathan family. He is the older brother of Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan. Yusuf married Mumbai based physiotherapist Afreen on. His wife gave birth to a boy on 17 April 2014.

Following his impressive performances in the 2007 Deodhar Trophy and the Inter-state domestic Twenty20 competition held in April 2007, Pathan was made a part of the Indian squad for the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship, held in South Africa in September 2007. He made his Twenty20 international debut in the final against Pakistan. He opened the batting for India in the match, and scored 15 runs in the process.

Following his good showing in the IPL, he was selected for the Indian one-day team. After IPL, though he played all the games in the Kitply Cup and Asia Cup, he got to bat only four times and could not perform well with both bat and ball. He was later dropped from the series against Sri Lanka. He performed well in domestic circuit and impressed the selectors and was selected for the England ODI series in November. He scored a fifty off just 29 balls in the second ODI against England in Indore, on his 26th birthday.

Yusuf had made his One Day International debut for India against Pakistan in Dhaka on 10 June 2008. He became a regular feature of the national One Day International team, but is yet to make his test debut.

Even though Pathan could not repeat his first IPL performance in the second season, he was selected in the Indian team to play the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 championships in England. In the second of India's Super 8 matches, he made an unbeaten 33 from 17 balls against England. Despite his knock, the team lost the game and crashed out of the tournament without making it to the semi-finals. His rare international debut came in the final of the ICC World Twenty20 in 2007.

In late 2009, Pathan was dropped from the limited overs team after a series of unproductive performances.

In the final of the 2010 Duleep Trophy cricket tournament, Pathan scored a hundred in the first innings and a double hundred in the second and led his team West Zone to a three wicket win over South Zone. Pathan made 108 in the first innings and an unbeaten 210 from 190 balls in the second innings to help his team chase down a mammoth target of 536. This became a world record for the highest successful run chase in first-class cricket history.

On 7 December 2010, Pathan's power hitting sealed a memorable 5-wicket win for India. Pathan clobbered the New Zealand attack with his aggressive innings, smashing an unbeaten 123 from 96 balls and shared an unbroken 133-run partnership with Saurabh Tiwary to guide India to a huge target of 316 with seven balls to spare and give the hosts a 4–0 lead in the series. He was named man of the match for this effort. The all-rounder clubbed seven fours and seven sixes on the way to his maiden one-day century to help the hosts overhaul New Zealand's challenging 315–7 with seven balls to spare at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.

At the awards distribution ceremony he stated that "this knock will boost my career". Indian captain Gautam Gambhir said "I have always said Pathan can finish games on his own, and that's what he did today, I had never seen something like this before. But I knew till the time Pathan was there, we would win the game."