Wasim Akram: the master of swing
Wasim Akram bowled left-arm fast with a whip of the wrist that could swing the ball either way, late, at genuine pace, and did it for Pakistan across three decades. He also, almost as an afterthought, batted well enough to make a Test double century.
Spotted at a trial
Wasim Akram was picked for Pakistan almost straight out of a domestic trial camp in Lahore in 1984, spotted by the former captain Javed Miandad while still a teenager with barely any first-class experience. He made his Test debut against New Zealand in Auckland in 1985, and it took only a few years for it to become clear what Pakistan had found: a left-arm fast bowler who could swing the new ball prodigiously, generate real pace, and control an old, roughed-up ball as well as anyone who had ever played the game.
He went on to play 104 Tests across 17 years, taking 414 wickets, and along the way developed into a capable enough lower-order batter to make three centuries and average over 22 with the bat, well above what would normally be expected of a strike bowler.
That speed of development, from a virtual unknown at a domestic trial to a Test player within a year, meant Akram spent much of his early career learning on the job at the highest level rather than working his way up gradually through domestic cricket, and it shaped a bowler willing to experiment with pace, angle and swing from very early in his career rather than settling into one fixed method.
The two Ws
Akram is remembered above all as one half of the most feared new-ball partnership of his era, alongside Waqar Younis. The two were nicknamed "the two Ws", Akram swinging the ball away from the right-hander with his stock delivery and Waqar specialising in a lethal in-swinging yorker, and together they gave Pakistan a pace attack that, through the 1990s, was arguably the most dangerous new-ball combination in world cricket. Where Waqar relied more on raw speed and the toe-crushing yorker, Akram was the more complete bowler: he could swing the ball both ways in the same spell, bowl a heavy, skiddy bouncer, and control his pace to set up batters over after over.
Between them the pair took close to 800 Test wickets for Pakistan, and Akram's ability to move the ball conventionally with the new ball and reverse it with the old made him, for much of his career, close to unplayable in home conditions on flat, abrasive pitches.
Reverse swing
Akram, along with Waqar and earlier pioneers like Sarfraz Nawaz and Imran Khan, is widely credited with popularising reverse swing, the technique of making an old ball swing sharply, and often late, in the opposite direction to conventional swing once it has roughened and lost its shine. The skill, developed and refined on the dry, abrasive pitches and outfields of Pakistan, became one of the most feared weapons in the sport during the 1990s, and it took years for batters and coaches around the world to properly understand how to counter it. Akram took 25 five-wicket hauls and five ten-wicket match hauls in his career, figures built as much on that mastery of the older ball as on raw pace with the new one.
Sheikhupura, 1996
Akram's highest Test score came with the bat rather than the ball, and it remains one of the more surprising entries in his record. Zimbabwe had made 375 batting first, and Pakistan had slipped to 237 for 7 when Akram came in at number nine, well below his more familiar seam-bowling role. He made an unbeaten 257 off 363 balls, still the world record for a Test innings by a number nine batter, hitting 12 sixes, a tally since matched but not beaten by any other batter in a Test innings. He added 313 with Saqlain Mushtaq for the eighth wicket, still the second-highest partnership for that wicket in Test history, helping Pakistan to 553 all out before the match petered into a draw, Zimbabwe closing their second innings on 241 for 7.
It is a reminder that, for all his fame as a bowler, Akram was genuinely dangerous with the bat too, capable of turning a Test on its head from a position where most sides expect very little.
Captain under pressure
Akram captained Pakistan in 25 Tests, winning 12 and losing 8, taking over at various points through the 1990s in a period when Pakistan cricket was frequently disrupted by boardroom politics and allegations of match-fixing that shadowed the sport in the subcontinent through that decade. He led Pakistan to the final of the 1999 World Cup, a one-day tournament outside this archive, and continued playing Test cricket until 2002, finishing his career against Bangladesh in Dhaka. Across his 104 Tests, Pakistan won 41 and lost 27, with Akram at or near the heart of the attack in almost every one of them.
His final years, in the early 2000s, showed a batter and bowler still contributing even as his career wound down: a century against Sri Lanka at Galle in 2000, alongside 31 wickets at 30.00 in his last full seasons, a heavier average than his career figure but still a genuine contribution from a bowler by then in his mid-thirties, well past the point many fast bowlers of his generation had already retired.
The numbers
Akram took 414 wickets in 104 Tests at an average of 23.62, with 25 five-wicket hauls, his best figures 7 for 119 against New Zealand at the Basin Reserve in 1994. He was slightly more effective at home, taking 154 wickets at 22.2 in his 41 home Tests against 255 at 24.6 in 62 Tests away, and his best decade by volume was the 1990s, 289 wickets at 21.45 across 62 Tests, the peak years of his partnership with Waqar. With the bat, he finished with 2,898 runs at 22.64 and three centuries, an unusually productive record for a specialist fast bowler.
By opponent his sharpest bowling figures came against West Indies, 79 wickets at 20.82 from 17 Tests against a batting line-up that gave most fast bowlers of his era very little, and against New Zealand, 60 wickets at 17.02 from 9 Tests, his cheapest average against any side he played more than a handful of times. His busiest ground was Iqbal Stadium in Faisalabad, 9 Tests for 41 wickets, one of several Pakistani venues where the dry, abrasive surface suited exactly the kind of reverse swing he had helped make famous.
Sources
- CricArcade Test archive: Wasim Akram's full record and scorecard links
- ESPNcricinfo: Wasim Akram player profile and career statistics
- Wisden Cricketers' Almanack: Wisden Cricketer of the Year profile, 1993