Re: 1st Test: Pakistan v South Africa, Johannesburg, Feb 1-5, 2013
Well those are the balls that were used in the A team tours and U19 tours that he was on and bowled pretty well - then the first half of Pak QEA trophy was played with Pak balls which offered more assistance to his bowling so he exploded and took bunch of wickets then in the lst few games they started using kooka balls with smaller seam and thats why he got little messsed up - but even with all that - watching him has given me more excitement than Umar Gul has done for last 3 years combined.
you have followed Pak cricket long enough to know that a lot of times new comers are ‘labeled’ one thing or other or a certain reputation for them starts to circulate among Pak cricketing journalist people by them and most of the time it is just to accommodate players from their own regions etc etc I am sure over last few years you have heard “Ahmed Shahzad is talented but he has attitude problem” or “Sharjil Khan is talented but he is too much of an on side player” or “Moh Talha has good pace but he is wayward” “Hammad Azaam is good prospect for future but we need XYZ’s experience for this xyz series” and mother of them all "Umar Akmal needs to site out because…"etc etc. While players like Imran Farhat, Moh Sami, Sohail Tanveer, YK, Gul, Afridi, Faisal, Abdul razaaq keep getting recalls after recalls.
So I suggest you start paying more attention to your instinct about new players and judge them as you see them and not pay much attention to those so called experts who have their own benifits associated to make sure why a new xyz guy gets a certain reputation.
thx for the explanation on type of balls…and yes we have very few junior players coming up these days…talented players like hammaad azam have been destroyed…so generalization shd be avoided