KARACHI: Pakistan’s forgotten batsman Muhammad Wasim has made an early impact in the New Zealand domestic season for Otago raising the question as to why a batsmen of his caliber is being ignored by our selectors?
The Rawalpindi born player has emerged as the highest scorer in the New Zealand first class season so far with 225 runs at an average of 45 with one hundred and one fifty for Otago.
While in the National one-day championship he is the third highest scorer with an average of 55 with two fifties in three innings.
And the best part is his runs have come in the early part of the New Zealand season when the pitches are wet and green and conditions overcast which makes life very difficult for the batsmen.
Something which is being experienced even by the highly rated and experienced Indian batting line-up in New Zealand.
The surprising part is that Wasim who will only be 26 in August this year has been ignored by the Pakistan selectors since the 1999/2000 season even though they keep on complaining of lack of options in the Pakistan top order batting.
Wasim who made a hundred on his test debut against New Zealand in 1997/98 season and then went on to make creditable scores in tests and One-dayers in Australia and Zimbabwe interestingly is opening the innings for Otago.
Wasim whose last test appearance was at Galle against Sri Lanka in June 2000 and his last One-dayer was in the Asia Cup tournament in Dhaka one month earlier has appeared in 18 tests and 25 ODIs for Pakistan before being dumped by the selectors.
One would hope that a talented player like Wasim is not lost to Pakistan cricket and he like others before him have not decided on settling down abroad where their cricket talents are better appreciated and utilized LINK
wasim..
ah he is such a class act
and damn fine player.
Really he haven't performed on the world stage according to his caliber yet. well he still played pretty good to earn a permanent place in any team, but tough luck he is in pakistan. where players are selected on the base of relations and refrences.
Guy comes from a blue collar family and definately dont have much reach. all he got is talent and trust me that in pakistan takes u no where.
well hope gud things come for him in future.
He is known to be more effective in bouncy wickets but you know what?He is daaam inconsistent. He was given alot of chances and he failed time and again. We dont want another Elahi..We need a solid batsmen with potential. Yeh nahee aik din cenrtury mar di or baaagi mein undaa
Immense talent and probably one of the straightest bats to play in a green shirt and sitaray-wali cap in a long time.
He did fail in the middle but there are hordes of players who've been given a lot more chances than him. He should've been tried out for the Test team a little bit longer, something might have come out of it. Instead of toying with players like Afridi in the 5-day game. With Afridi one can just hope he might play more maturely (which he never has) and stick around, at least with Mohd. Wasim you would know the failure wouldn't be a result of a skied catch inside the circle 15 balls into the innings.
Wasim was dropped after an adultery case against him, Ijaz and Afridi. He got the axe as he was a budding player while the others survived, although Ijaz was later dumped after his match fixing antiques came to the fore. I'm not sure about the authenticity of the adultery claim, but there must've been something. That thing apart, he was a fine player and could've been successful at the internatinal level.
He was just an incostent player who was no ODI material. He might have been successfull in Tests, but I doubt it. He was just too inconsistent to be kept in the team. The guy is talented, but wasted all the chances he got.
that guy had no technique....
see his dismissal over the career (the short one), he was alsmot always BOWLED....
he wud "leave alone" yorkers and inswingers....
and was no good for ODIs....