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Showing posts from March, 2011

Saeed Anwar The Majestic Opener

Majestic timing and placement were Saeed Anwar's hallmarks. He was an opener capable of electrifying starts in all cricket through graceful strokeplay rather than brute force. He loved driving through the off side with minimal footwork. He annihilated any bowler offering width outside off stump although he too regularly guided the ball straight into the hands of fourth slip or gully. He first came to prominence as a one-day player but soon achieved equal success in Test cricket. His father was a talented club cricketer when business allowed. Aged 45, he played in a club match with his son and straight-drove a ball which, his son says, almost cleared two grounds. Anwar thinks he may have inherited some of his wrist-power from his father. He developed it by playing squash (daily) and table tennis; he became a slow left-arm bowler too; and, above all, he practised batting in the garage of his Karachi home. The bowler was not his much younger brother, Javed Anwar, who has played for ...

The Velvet Sledgehammers - Younis Khan & Mohammad Yousuf

The Velvet Sledgehammers - Younis Khan & Mohammad Yousuf by Ammar Bin Muhammad Ashraf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License . The two Heavyweight giants, one is fearless, as befits his Pathan ancestry and will forever be remembered as the second Khan to bring home a world title for Pakistan, and other one is best known in cricket for his achievement in 2006 when he broke the world record for most Test runs in a single calendar year. First Mohammad Yousuf, at his best, watching Yousuf bat is an unnervingly tranquil experience, especially amid the traditional chaos of a Pakistan batting order. He has a dangerously high backlift, which makes every shot he plays, a late, unhurried afterthought, but a beautiful one. The feet take time to get going, but once they do, they dance with the best. Square and behind it on the off side are his areas, where his game is the most enchanting. Younis Khan, it is as a batsman, and a fearless one, that he m...