by Shahzad Firdous
30th July 2010

A friend of mine described Kamran Akmal as ‘an accident waiting to happen in test matches’. Kamran Akmal’s keeping has always been untidy but the reason why he is still in the team is because he is one of the most experienced players in the current squad and also because in a young batting lineup his presence provides just the bit of depth the team needs but for me when a keeper drops a catch he lets the whole team down badly and the morale of the whole team is shattered because of it. In test matches, opportunities don’t come all that easily and a missed chance of say a Collingwood is going to haunt you through out the match and such batsmen don’t present their wicket on a plate!

Arguments that had been heard in the past in favor of Kamran Akmal were that he can at any stage of a game play a match-winning innings and recover the loss as a result of his follies. He had in fact played some of the blinders. Some of his centuries were extremely brilliant – one in India to save a test match batting whole of the last day in 2005, another against India coming in at 39 for 6 in 2006 in Karachi test – a game that Pakistan went onto win. But not only those innings have stopped coming but also his keeping has got from worse to worst. I was also a strong advocate of keeping Kamran in the team to provide balance to the team but when the Sydney happened I also gave up hope on Kamran in test matches. And what happened on the first day of first test against England was gonna happen at some stage it was reasonably foreseeable for anyone who watches cricket and knows about the game. Here Kamran should also help himself by taking a retirement from test cricket and concentrate on limited overs cricket in which he is one of the best in business as he takes the game away from the opposition with his aggressive batting and in which a dropped chance doesn’t cost as badly as it does in tests.

Moving onto Pakistan’s backup bowling which rendered no support to world class pair of Aamer and Asif. One thought after the Australia series, maybe Kaneria and Umar Gul have clamped down on inconsistency but here again Kaneria was the major disappointment. Although Kaneria holds a record number of wickets for a Pakistani spinner, but still doubts have always been raised on his abilities throughout his career. His critics say he gives away runs far too quickly and also picks wickets too late. Such claims, in fact, have some strength too. He does go for awful number of runs and provides awful lot number of easy opportunities to the batsmen. Figures of 100 for no wicket in some 20 odd over, least said about it the better but when he did create a sure chance, Kamran messed it up. A decision went against Pakistan too against Morgan off the bowling of Shoaib Malik but such things are part and parcel of the game.

One would argue when Aamer and Asif had done the hard work in getting England down to 118 for four, backup bowlers should have been good enough to make further inroads but they eased the pressure and allowed Morgan and Collingwood an easy passage. I had mentioned in my previous articles that I wanted to see Irfan getting selected as cover for unpredictability of Umar Gul. Pakistan made a fresh start by not picking the two Ys on this tour and many other senior players so I would say when they did want a fresh start and go with youngsters why they have carried people like Kamran, Kaneria and Gul in their squad. Kamran and Gul can serve the team in limited overs format but its time we moved from kaneria. Afridi has retired from test cricket otherwise he could have been a good pick in kaneria’s place. Abdul Rehman is one player who has done well whenever he has played for the team in any format. He is perfectly suited to test cricket too and is economical as well. Saeed Ajmal on the other end as we know is rather flat and therefore best suited to limited overs cricket.

Hammad Azam is another name that could have been handy in these conditions. English conditions generally favor swing bowling and even 3 pacers are not enough in these conditions to really cause damage therefore Pakistan could have done with a medium pace all-rounder like him too and I already had shown my reservations about Shoaib Malik in test cricket. Lets hope he can prove me and many of his other critics wrong when Pakistan bats. I think we still need those experienced batsmen in the team rather than relying on a wicketkeeper batsman to do the batting. If he is that good with the bat he should play as a batsman only but I don’t think he can cut it into test team on his batting alone. So our selection requires a serious rethinking to be done which players to pick and which not to pick because what it does is spoil the efforts of others who are putting in a huge effort to put the team into a good position!

A word on test series against Australia – timing of my previous article was after Pak bowling destroyed Aus batting at headingly. It was a tense finish as it was expected for two reasons. For One, Australians we know don’t give up easily. Second, our brittle inexperienced batting was nervous because of the failures in recent past specially in chasing down smallish tricky totals. It was always going to be a to be a tense chase and it was made even harder by Ricky Ponting’s field placements and Australia’s sharp fielding stopping some certain boundaries. Nevertheless, Imran Farhat and Azhar Ali dug in and formed an important match winning partnership. This would be one of the best innings of Imran’s career so far and 50 to Azhar Ali’s name in a crunch situation will go a long way in boosting Azhar’s confidence too. They were battling against the history. Although Pakistan lost 4 wickets in the last session chasing down 40 runs left but it was still a great win and any runs were precious as diamonds in that situation!