Blogs: Hassan Cheema: The wasted talent of Danish Kaneria | Cricket Blogs | ESPN Cricinfo
Another wasted talent and victim of the corrupt Kamran Akmal. The likes of Kaneria, Sami, Afridi, Akhtar could have much better bowling records and team would have done better if not for K Akmal. It is a sorry affair that Akmal is still in the team.
“England tour that became the beginning of the end for Inzamam and Bob Woolmer’s team (and also the tour that started Kamran Akmal’s irreversible decline), Kaneria was expected to be the leader of the attack in the absence of Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif; instead he went for over 50 runs a wicket and got back on track in an underwhelming career. Of course, mere numbers do not always signify the quality of a performance. From that England tour onwards, the inability of Kaneria to become the bowler he was meant to be had much to do with the support he was granted.With Akmal being as comfortable with gloves as OJ Simpson, Kaneria missed out on 14 wickets just due to his keeper’s spills. Regardless of how those wickets would have changed the context of those matches, or Kaneria’s confidence, the stats reveal how his career was affected: over those 21 Tests he took 92 wickets at 38.2; if those 14 catches had been taken he would have averaged 33.1 (assuming he had conceded the same number of runs), an eminently respectable number for a modern spinner. While Kaneria has to take the blame for his lack of evolution, one has to concede that Kamran Akmal contributed. That man has a lot to answer for.”