Mohammad Yousuf announces retirement from international cricket

[hanibal]

@fkhan2

I know you guys are talking about something else but just wanted to to comment on your statement about his bowling.

It is a pretty common misconception that his bowling has improved in the last 2-years. I have been hearing that for the last 8-10 years that his bowling has improved in the last few years and it always amuses me to hear it from people who have been following Pakistan cricket. The fact is that he developed as a recognized bowler early in his career and has been a very deceptive one since early 2000’s.

I would encourage you to read this article on him by Osman Samiuddin. I have read many articles over the past several years on why people never considered him a strike bowler. This is a fairly recent article which I remember reading few weeks ago but I am sure you can find many more from the past on the very same topic.

Article does proves my point

But Afridi the bowler, as we now know him, came into being in August 2004, in a long-forgotten quickie in the cricketing outpost of Amstelveen. In and out of the side before that, with little clarity over his role, he has since been an ever-present, missing just 15 ODIs: the complicit understanding is that he now makes it into the side as a bowler first. Where and how he bats are mostly irrelevant, though everyone still gets in a twist about it. He used to bowl just over six overs a game on average before then, whereas he now bowls close to nine; so vast is the difference in strike rates and averages, it could conceivably be two different bowlers.
The de-hyphenation explains it: before, he used to be run-saving, partnership-breaking or part-time. Now he is unquestionably a strike bowler, a man for wickets in a stretch of the game when wickets are not so likely. Yet his skills are still often undervalued.

I believe Jay Suriya of Srilanka, Ijaz Ahmed & Salim Malik from Pakistan, Tendulkar from India, Phil Simmons from West Indies were called partnership breaker as well , it was only that all of them have/had fame of batsmen…

Afridi may have been hidden under the great names of earlier times, remember we had Saqlain Mushtaq, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhter in those times…

Afridi to me is in the class of AbdurRazzaq and Azhar Mehmood nothing more than that..

Lets look at his average

Bowling : Test Avg 34.9, Strike Rate 65.7 in 26 Matches, One Day Avg 34.6, Strike rate 45 in 293 Matches

Batting : Test Avg 37. 4, in 26 Matches, One Day Avg 23.2

I don’t know how to call him great player…