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Inzamam-ul-Haq helps Pakistan to victory in their first Twenty20, England v Pakistan, Twenty20, Bristol, August 28, 2006
Yet, there are exceptions -- and Waqar Younis, who made his international debut on the same day as India's Sachin Tendulkar, is one of them. With 759 international wickets under his belt, you would have thought he was approaching his use-by date, but the world's greatest exponent of reverse swing remains as lethal as he always was.
Nicknamed the "Burewala Express", after his central Punjab hometown, Waqar Younis in action is a sight for the gods -- the furious run up, the trademark leap and the hurling action have been much admired, never imitated.
The lethal quality of his bowling is best encapsulated in one statistic -- Younis has 57 per cent of his victims either bowled or LBW, which is way ahead of any other bowler past or present.
With Wasim Akram, Younis formed the most lethal bowling combination seen since the days of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson.
At the peak of his career, as he prepares to lead Pakistan to the World Cup for the first time, Younis discusses with Faisal Shariff the problems of Pakistan cricket, his famous now on now off relationship with mate Wasim Akram, and the intricacies of reverse swing.
My generation grew up at a time when colonial hang-up was at its peak. Our older generation had been slaves and had a huge inferiority complex of the British. The school I went to was similar to all elite schools in Pakistan . Despite gaining independent, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public schoolboys rather than Pakistanis.
I read Shakespeare, which was fine, but no Allama Iqbal – the national poet of Pakistan . The class on Islamic studies was not taken seriously, and when I left school I was considered among the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore Western clothes.
Despite periodically shouting ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ in school functions, I considered my own culture backward and religion outdated. Among our group if any one talked about religion, prayed or kept a beard he was immediately branded a Mullah.
Because of the power of the Western media, our heroes were Western movie stars or pop stars. When I went to Oxford already burdened with this hang up, things didn’t get any easier. At Oxford , not just Islam, but all religions were considered anachronism. Science had replaced religion and if something couldn’t be logically proved it did not exist. All supernatural stuff was confined to the movies.
Philosophers like Darwin , who with his half-baked theory of evolution had supposedly disproved the creation of men and hence religion, were read and revered. Moreover, European history reflected its awful experience with religion. The horrors committed by the Christian clergy during the Inquisition era had left a powerful impact on the Western mind.
To understand why the West is so keen on secularism, one should go to places like Cordoba in Spain and see the torture apparatus used during the Spanish Inquisition. Also the persecution of scientists as heretics by the clergy had convinced the Europeans that all religions are regressive.
On 1st January 1989, Saeed Anwar made his O.D.I debut against West Indies at Perth in a World Series game . Saeed Anwar batted at no.3 and could score only 3 runs getting out to the fiery Malcolm Marshall . Saeed Anwar's O.D.I career started on a difficult Down Under Tour and his first three innings, he had scores of 3,15 and 0. Another 8 poor innings from Saeed (excepting the 42* in the home series against India) followed . However on 10th March 1990, a day to remember for Saeed -as he posted his maiden One day International Hundred against Sri Lanka at the Adelaide Oval in a Benson And Hedges World Series league match . Incidentally Saeed along with Rameez Raza put on 202 runs for the 1st wicket in that match . After this innings, there was no looking back for Saeed Anwar as he scored centuries after centuries and at one stage, Saeed had more number of centuries than his half-centuries !!! In the mid-nineties, Saeed Anwar and Aamir Sohail were a very formidable opening pair .
Saeed Anwar has the honour of playing one of the best One Day Innings ever , scoring a huge 194 against India on 21st May 1997 in the Pepsi Independence Cup league match at Chennai . Saeed Anwar has a special fondness to the Indian Bowling taking 2002 runs (in 50 matches) out of the 8823 runs he scored in 247 O.D.Is . Saeed scoring as many as 4 hundreds and 8 fifties in the 50 matches he played against India .
Overall Saeed Anwar scored 8823 runs in the 247 matches long career and scoring 20 hundreds and 43 fifties . He has a healthy batting average of 39.2 and to his credit has 42 catches as a fielder .