Former Pakistani cricketer Saleem Jaffar has said Imran Khan set the fast bowling trend in Pakistan, which subsequently led to the arrival of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Aaqib Javed, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir to the scene.
“His action, his run-up, his bowling style, and the way his ball possessed pace; the generation of that time became quite impressed because of this. He indeed brought the fast bowling tsunami,” PakPassion quoted Jaffar, as saying.
Jafar said the overall quality of cricket has not improved much since his time and added that the quality of players was much better during his time.
He, however, admitted that fielding has improved drastically over the past few years.
“Nowadays, fielders have begun to slide more often, throwing has improved a lot, and so I will say that in my opinion, if you look at it from the perspective of financial benefits even, then currently, cricketers have much more benefits and cricket is much more stressful these days,” Jaffer said.
He also pointed out that cricketers tend to get confused by hiring different coaches at different levels, and stressed that the player should rely on one coach.
Jaffar admitted that Karachi club cricket’s structure has ceased to be competitive and it has failed to produce batsmen like Khalid Latif, Shahzaib Hasan and Khurram Manzoor in recent times.
He stressed that cricket selection was not marred by political interferences during his tenure as selector but added that the selection process cannot be ‘black and white’ under certain circumstances.
“For example, if you have Inzamam ul Haq in your team playing a certain position in the batting order and you have someone who has scored more runs playing at that position, you can’t automatically select him until the position is vacant,” he said.
Jaffar featured in 14 Tests and 39 ODIs for Pakistan.
Imran inspired my generation of fast bowlers, says Jaffar
