Pakistan

Two Pakistan players to watch this summer

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We know you all come here for our singular insight. As such, we’re going to name a couple of Pakistan players you might want to keep an eye on in coming weeks. These are players you might not know so well, but we think they might have something of an impact during the Test series to come.

Going off their performances in the warm-up match against Somerset, it’ll be worth watching a batsman called Younus Khan and a bowler called Mohammad Amir.

Despite making his debut in 2009, Amir has somehow only played 14 Tests. He looks handy though. Here he is doing that Pakistan left-arm swing bowler thing.

Now the other guy – this Younus Khan fella – he’s been about for a bit. He made his debut in 2000, at which point he looked like a weathered old gnarl-dog. And despite playing almost 400 games for his country since then, he doesn’t look a day older.

Don’t let that gnarl-dog face fool you, though. He’s as fit as a husky that’s been doing high intensity interval training. In fact (and this is true, it’s not some piece of made-up bullshit like we usually feed you), he recently said that he feels so full of vim and vigour that he’d like to play for Pakistan for another four or five years.

Okay, he didn’t say ‘vim and vigour’ – we’re paraphrasing. But it’s true that he doesn’t plan on retiring any time soon – even though he’s done so on at least nine occasions already.

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Similar deliveries:

Default ThumbnailPakistan thrive on hardship and chaos Default ThumbnailNo, turns out Younus Khan is retiring after all Default ThumbnailPakistan cricket’s strength and weakness Default ThumbnailYounus Khan thinks Twenty20 is only a fun game

16 comments

  2. Anyone else feel that new, exciting England, who beat the number 1 Test team in their own back yard, might be, as they say, “up against it”?

  3. I’ve been hearing good things about this new exciting player called Misbah-ul-Haq, typical of Pakistan to select an unpredictable youngster but I think his selection bodes well for their future.

    1. He’s actually captain – but there are major concerns over pushing a promising player into a position of responsibility at such a young age. It could crush him.

      The pressure’s immense and some believe that he’ll have played his last match for Pakistan within the next year or so.

  4. Hmm. We do need to discuss the “other matter” though, because… well, just because. I recall the emotions expressed here at the time, which began with disbelief and mutated into sadness and disappointment in one case, fiery rage in two cases. Amir was the former, of course, such a talent, such a future, such a useless covert over-stepper.

    Anyway, I have decided to give him The Benefit of the Doubt, on the basis that a) he was 18 at the time, and b) he pleaded guilty and apologised. In fact, it’s more than that. I think I trust implicitly that he will be playing to win with every fibre of his being. As the scene of his greatest failure, I cannot believe that he would do anything but that here in England.

    From what I’ve heard, he is genuinely contrite, but that won’t make the slightest bit of difference to the wilfully un-nuanced reporting he will face. The opening paragraph BBC report on the Taunton match highlights the problem:

    Convicted spot-fixer Mohammad Amir marked his return to first-class cricket in England after a five-year ban with three Somerset wickets.

    23 words, one third of which were strictly unnecessary in the reporting of the match (Mohammad Amir marked his return to first-class cricket in England with three Somerset wickets). Stuart Rent-a-Quote Broad has told the Daily Mail (no, really) that he will “shake his hand” but that he hasn’t forgiven him. Alastair Cook has described him as “tainted”, and said that he will face a hostile reception, a prediction metaphysically similar to that of the three witches in Macbeth.

    My suggestion to people going to the cricket would be to make your minds up about him first, then if you don’t trust him, don’t go. Why would anyone want to go to a match just to hate an opponent? Besides, the world is simply a better place when Pakistani fast bowlers are tearing in from the Nursery End.

    1. We could discuss it.

      Or we could all just go with what you said and talk about something else instead.

  7. Trescothick has just scored a century against Pakistan.

    Is it too late for a recall?

  8. One of the best things about this delivery is that it also links back (in “Similar deliveries”) to “Younus Khan thinks Twenty20 is only a fun game”, which perhaps has the best first three sentences of any piece of cricket writing I’ve read.

    1. “Does.” “He.” And “No.”

      Which crams a whole lorra cricket – three whole sentences worth – into just 8 letters (and three punctuation marks).

  9. So, how was the Super Series for everyone? Did it make anyone care more about any of the matches?

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