By Tapan Joshi
A wizard or a rogue? A gentleman or a master at gamesmanship? The greatest left-arm bowler of all time or an egocentric who was constantly at the loggerheads with his colleagues? Wasim Akram’s 19 eventful years in international cricket come to an end and along with those years ends an era.
An era of breathtaking bowling skills, an era of clashes and intrigues, an era surrounded by the allegations of match-fixing. However, the greatest tribute to the Pakistani comes from the batsmen all round the world. Ask any modern-day batsman to name the five best bowlers he has faced and you would invariably find Wasim Akram in the list.
It is indeed fascinating to see how the masters work. Take a cricket ball from any other left hand and give it to Wasim, and it will start behaving the way the bowler commands. It will swerve and dip viciously, it will on most times rebel with scientific theories and swing in a completely opposite direction, or it will be screaming towards batsman’s head. Wasim when in mood and form was a sight for the Gods.
Statistically, he leaves no-one in doubt that he was the greatest of his kind. The first player to reach 500 wickets in one-dayers, and add another 414 Test wickets to that and you have a bloke who has sent back almost 1,000 international batsmen. He played five World Cups and was nominated as man-of-the-match in Pakistan’s greatest triumph on the cricket field in the 1992 World Cup in Australia, and led his team with distinction for series wins over England and Australia.
When I last met Wasim, he was in a reflective mood. We were at the Centurion cricket ground in South Africa. “Cricket has taken its pound of flesh,” he told me, “I have had some fantastic moments, and (I have) gone through hell. I even got diabetes, a disease that will remain with me till I live. Imagine a physically fit man like me having diabetes, but the mental agony (of match-fixing allegations) was too much to bear. But it is all worth it. Looking back, I feel blessed. I have led a great life and I love my career.”
Wasim has a doting wife, Huma, and two kids aged six and three. Talking about his future plans, he had said, “I don’t know, maybe with television or something. But my number one priority would be to catch up with all the fun that I have missed, I want to play all day with my kids and be with my wife. I will tell them that after toiling and sweating for almost 20 years, here I am. No more suitcase existence for sometime.”
Wasim had style, oodles of it, and off the field, he had the capacity to charm birds off the trees. With his female fans, and they were always in plenty, he was a perfect gentleman, a man who knew his etiquette, and with his junior colleagues, his students, he was the all-knowing Wasim bhai. “I don’t use my head when I am bowling. I just listen to Wasim bhai and bowl,” said Abdul Razzak. In fact, so much is his hold over youngsters like Razzak, Shahid Afridi and Saqlain Mushtaq that Waqar Younis found it near impossible to lead the Pakistan team in the 2003 World Cup.
Vinod Kambli, who played some cricket against Wasim, has this to say about him: “With ball in hand, he was big trouble. Even on the most docile wicket, Wasim would be up to something. I first faced him in Sharjah on a good batting wicket but the pace and swing he was generating there was baffling. I remember asking Sachin Tendulkar after the game that what would this guy do on a bowler-friendly wicket. Sachin just laughed.”
Whether Wasim Akram is a rogue, no-one has proved and it is unlikely the case will be pursued now that he has retired. When one looks at the sheer joy he has provided to the millions, cutting across the boundaries of nationality, religion and colour, one can only think of him as a once-in-a-lifetime bowler.
You will be missed, Wasim bhai.
