Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
Well, for ODIs we have Afridi, who's more effective in bowling, and a better fielder, sometimes good for a few runs as well.
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
^Yes
Well, for ODIs we have Afridi, who's more effective in bowling, and a better fielder, sometimes good for a few runs as well.
For sure, I agree Danesh is a Test bowler - but I really hope he can maintain his achievement and / or rise further in skill and consistency...
and he can be tried for ODIs as well - why not, if he proves a few more times that he can maintain his economy rate...a match winner is a match winner, the stigma of being "sloggable" can't stick too long
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
During the course of the second Test against New Zealand in Wellington, wrist spinner Danish Kaneria inched past an important milestone on the ladder of Pakistani wicket-takers. With 238 wickets (from 55 Tests), he has now become the most successful spinner (and the fourth-most successful bowler of any type) in Pakistani Test history. Ahead of him lie only the truly hallowed names – Imran Khan, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram. Kaneria is almost 29, and still has several years of active playing life left. If he continues at his current rate of 4.3 wickets per Test and six Tests per year, he could well end up with 400 wickets.
He is no Shane Warne, but then nobody is. Still, Kaneria is potentially a great bowler. His numbers (an average of 34.04 and strike rate of 67.9) stand up well against Pakistan’s other leggies; an accomplished fraternity by any standards. Abdul Qadir took 236 Test wickets at an average of 32.80 and a strike rate of 72.5. Mushtaq Ahmed had 185 at 32.97 and 67.7, and Intikhab Alam, the first Pakistani wrist-spinner to go past 100 Test wickets, took 125 at 35.95 and 83.7.
Although Kaneria has done exceptionally well against Bangladesh (34 wickets at an average of 16.41 and strike rate of 36.1), he has succeeded against all the frontline teams as well. His Man-of-the-Match awards have come against South Africa, Sri Lanka, and West Indies, in addition to Bangladesh. During Pakistan’s 2005 series in India that was drawn 1-1, he performed better than his revered Indian counterpart Anil Kumble.
Kaneria’s assets include a highly effective googly, an accurate stock ball, and the will to strike back after coming in for some stick. Nevertheless, despite his ability and success, we are still left with a sense that he has not lived up to his promise. There is a feeling that he has not continued to grow as a bowler (he still cannot bowl a flipper, for instance), but to be fair, unimaginative selection is also to blame. With a respectable limited-overs record in domestic English and Pakistan cricket, he deserves greater opportunities in ODIs and Twenty20s. But in nine years of international cricket, he has played only 18 ODIs and not a single Twenty20 international for Pakistan.
Kaneria’s poor batting and fielding are cited as unacceptable limited-overs liabilities, but Saeed Ajmal, a tight spinner who is no better at batting and fielding than Kaneria, has shown you can be effective in limited-overs cricket on the basis of spin alone. The greater barrier is the presence of Shahid Afridi, a transformed wrist-spinner who these days can do no wrong. In the 1920s and 30s, Clarie Grimmett and Bill O’Reilly wreaked havoc as an Australian wrist-spinning partnership, but these days it is sacrilegious to suggest that you play two wrist spinners together. So long as this stale mindset prevails, Kaneria is unlikely to play ODIs or Twenty20s for Pakistan.
He is certainly the best wrist-spinner in Test cricket today, although that isn’t saying much. His natural comparison is with Qadir, but he lacks Qadir’s intensity and repertoire, and has yet to rip through an innings the way Qadir did on a few memorable occasions. Unlike Qadir, he has not mastered the art of flighting the ball and don’t expect him to bowl the ball of the century, because unlike Warne, he cannot get serious turn from balls pitching outside leg.
The flip side of this argument, of course, is that if you just fall short in comparison to the likes of Qadir and Warne, you’re really not doing too badly. Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Qadir, and Warne, along with Grimmett and O’Reilly, are five wrist-spinners who have made it into Christopher Martin-Jenkins’s ranking of the top 100 cricketers of all time. Will a similar compilation in later years find room for Kaneria? If he can learn one or two more tricks, it just might.
Source
A good article. I totally agree with him, he needs to improve his bowling varieties to be even more lethal.
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
His greatst strength is his stamina.He can bowl long spells!!!
We are not just talking about sheer stats or numbers here.
Qadir had an aura about him and he was held in high esteem by his contemporaries incl. Viv Richards and Botham. Same can’t be said about Kaneria. Richie Benaud also spoke very highly of him. On a turning pitch Qadir was an absolute nightmare like his best haul of 9/56 against England in Lahore in 1987.
Qadir 6/16 v WI (53 all out in second innings), 1986
HowSTAT! Match Scorecard
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
^^ Yaar GA - Qadir was a great of that time - but I am sure you agree that Kaneria is our best hope right now for wrist spin...so we just want him to be like this for some time...
and
He could be part of the ODI team when the pitch is suited to it...
^ Agreed. Kaneria is the best test spinner we have at the moment but I still won't pick him for ODIs and T20. Both Afridi and Saeed Ajmal are better than Kaneria in those formats and there is no need to change that combo just yet
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
Well I meant, he can't be written off completely - there is a potential - I mean there could be a track where we know he will matter, and could be a match winner, why not then play him. If you strike his name out forever, how will you know if that is a possibility...
No not at present
Kaneria leaks far too many runs which you can afford in tests (as you have all the time in the world to experiment a few things) but not in limited overs format. Those two (Afridi and Ajmal) not only keep it tight but also take wickets when it matters in T20 and ODI.
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
Well I am sure if he continues with his current form, they will give him a chance...
Lets see
Hope for the best.
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
If you look at the stats (SR, eco. etc) for Qadir and Kaneria they are similar. Infact Kaneria took less matches to take as many wickets. So how was Qadir better? I haven't seen him bowl so people who have seen Qadir bowl can shed some lght on this.
Re: Congratulations to Danish Kaneria
^^ A1K - some of us here have - Abdul Qadir was a great of the 80s and he also was the mentor that protege's (not literally speaking) such as Warne looked up to - Qadir was like the Imran of that era of viv richards, Miandad etc etc..
But Kaneria is what we have today...he needs support in the field and he needs to keep working hard..
Well stats alone are not enough to assess a player’s greatness. Qadir’s googly was almost unplayable and he could bowl six different deliveries per over. Just read what Scyld Berry says here about Qadir:
“It is impossible to believe that wrist-spin has ever been bowled better than Qadir did in his home city of Lahore in 1987-88, when he took 9 for 56 against England. Graham Gooch, who faced him that day, said Qadir was even finer than Shane Warne, to whom he passed on the candle.”
Abdul Qadir | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
At a glance Viv and Chanderpaul’s test batting stats look similar but noone in their right minds would say that they had same ability. Viv was head and shoulders the best batsman of his generation
Records | Test matches | Batting records | Most runs in career | Cricinfo.com
And while Kaneria’s test stats are good, his ODI stats are quite ordinary. On top of that his batting and fielding are worse than both Afridi and Ajmal.
Danish Kaneria | Pakistan Cricket | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com