Disclaimer: What I am going to say about Sami below is my impression of him formed over years of seeing him bowl, and not based on his performance in the ongoing Test match between England and Pakistan.
A bowlers job is not only to get wickets, but to also to stop the flow of runs, and build pressure by bowling a tight, consistent, well thought out line and length. You can’t judge a bowlers quality by looking at the wickets a bowler gets in a match, nor can you blame him too much when he doesn’t get any.
However, you can tell good bowlers apart from rubbish by observing how they bowl. Sami is what R.P. Singh (and to some extent, Agarkar of old days) are for India. Absolute piles of siht.
I have never remembered SAmi for creating or maintaing pressure on the batting team. In fact, more often than not, he’s proven to be an escape volve that is used by the batsmen to relieve pressure. Sure bowlers dont get wickets in every match, even Wasim and Waqar didn’t. Sure they get hit for a lot of runs once in a while, Shoaib still does. But good bowlers create an atmosphere of pressure, or at least mount an opposition against the batting.
But Sami has never done that, even when he’s getting a lot of wickets. For example, in a test match in New Zealand (after Shoaib got injured), he got a hat-trick or near hat-trick and won us the test match. But in between his wickets, be bowled absolutely rubbish as he so often does.
There are bowlers who make the batsmen work hard by maintaining a good line and length, and there are “sprayers,” who come rushing to the wicket, only to spray the ball hard at the bastmen, in an undetermined, unpredictable manner, sometimes at a good pace, as in the case of Sami, and sometimes not even that, like R. P. Singh. Occasionally they get wickets, but we should never form hopes for them to spearhead the pace attacks of our respective teams.
I don’t care if Sami gets a 5-for in each innings of this match (England vs Pakistan, 1st test match). I have seen him bowl for two sessions, and he’s still the same old sprayer, just without the hair that had previously obstracted his view of the batsmen.
May Asif, Shoaib and Naveed get fit soon, and we get rid of this piece of junk who’s held and blocked the spot of a pacer in our bowling attack years. He doesn’t contribute anything to our team anyway, we could have used his spot to experiment and find a good pace bowler.
Matlab Sami ki koi khami nazar nahi ayi abhi tak??
:k: 