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20th March, 2015 : The Wahab Riaz vs Shane Watson showdown!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>“<a href="https://twitter.com/WahabViki">@WahabViki</a>: Thnku for your advise in the morning .<a href="https://twitter.com/KP24">@KP24</a>” pleasure mate. Incredible spell of bowling. Deserved more!</p>— Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) <a href="https://twitter.com/KP24/status/578953444079243264">March 20, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Afridian4Life said:
dont embarrass us, even we know Shami run is a fluke. Wahab is miles better than him

stop with this nonsense of comparing a tricycle with a Harlee :facepalm:
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:))) afridian with a big upper cut

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As an Indian, I can only dream of having a bowler in our team capable of turning up the heat to such intensity. Shoaib Akhtar was my favorite bowler as a kid mainly due to his demeanor and the fear that he put in the batsmen.

I hope we'll get to see more of such brilliant express bowling from Wahab. This is what makes cricket fun to watch.
 
Cracket said:
As an Indian, I can only dream of having a bowler in our team capable of turning up the heat to such intensity. Shoaib Akhtar was my favorite bowler as a kid mainly due to his demeanor and the fear that he put in the batsmen.

I hope we'll get to see more of such brilliant express bowling from Wahab. This is what makes cricket fun to watch.
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Yup, i was reminded of old days again today when he was bowling his first spell....Akhter-isk in many ways..although i do feel they're very different personalities..Wahab is aggressive, never backs down but is always fair....Shoaib on other hand, i felt genuinely enjoyed intimidating, hitting people ..with Wahab, getting wickets is the main goal, the fear factor is just an add on which helps him get there...with Akhter i genuinely wondered if it was the other way around at times :))
 
Afridian4Life said:
dont embarrass us, even we know Shami run is a fluke. Wahab is miles better than him

stop with this nonsense of comparing a tricycle with a Harlee :facepalm:
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Hey, you seem to have an IQ to that of your idol, so don't expect much from you;

But, nevertheless, it is useful for you to know some cricketing terminology before you becoming a laughing stock on a cricket forum; DO you even know the meaning of a trundler?

Wahab bowled great today and averaged around 146/147 kmph which is very sharp and Shami averages around 143 kmph. So, how is Shami a trundler. Shami has bowled well during this tourney;

And no, I'm not comparing Shami with Wahab; Look again at my post before spouting your gibberish;
 
That was some spell . Wahab has looked a different bowler in this world cup. Giving his 100% and bowling with energy. Its a shame that there were about 6 catches dropped off him in this wc. Even 2 today. Could have made game more interesting had those been taken.
Never the less it was a superb spell. Well played.
 
cricketfanfirst said:
Hey, you seem to have an IQ to that of your idol, so don't expect much from you;

But, nevertheless, it is useful for you to know some cricketing terminology before you becoming a laughing stock on a cricket forum; DO you even know the meaning of a trundler?

Wahab bowled great today and averaged around 146/147 kmph which is very sharp and Shami averages around 143 kmph. So, how is Shami a trundler. Shami has bowled well during this tourney;

And no, I'm not comparing Shami with Wahab; Look again at my post before spouting your gibberish;
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read my post again, well read it 10 times then you might know that I didn't call Shami trundler, I called him a fluke which he is.
 
Another anniversary of the famous encounter
 
Good spell but one which has been most overrated and allowed Wahab to play for 3 more years based on that. A spell is nothing if it doesn't end up taking the wicket which Wahab couldn't. Yes a catch got dropped but it still doesn't count as a wicket.

Spells are those where bowler bamboozles the batsman and in the end takes the batsman's wicket to rub salt in the wound. Like Flintoff vs Kallis or Ishant vs Ponting.
 
Why people overhyped this?
That was one good spell of Wahab to Watson and many bowlers bowl some good spells to the batsman all around the world more often than not.
 
Any foreign commentator who does no real research on Pakistan cricket just turns up in the commentary box these days praising how Wahab Riaz is a deadly bowler and his overs need to be seen off.
 
I've never seen something be this overhyped before. The guy didn't even get him out.
 
It spanned just three-and-half overs at its zenith, but Wahab Riaz's fire-breathing battle with Shane Watson amidst a gripping quarter-final at Adelaide Oval remains, for many, the defining contest of the 2015 World Cup.

Largely unheard of in Australia before the tournament began, left-armer Wahab regularly clocked speeds of around 150kph as Pakistan tried desperately to defend a sub-par total of 213 and then Watson hung tough after his team lost early wickets to teeter at 3-59.

Wahab had accounted for two of those prized scalps – opener David Warner who sliced a catch to third man, and skipper Michael Clarke after fending a fizzing bouncer to short mid-wicket – but the fuse for the fight with Watson had effectively been lit hours earlier.

That was when Wahab was using his not-insubstantial batting skills – he had posted an unbeaten half-century against Zimbabwe earlier in the tournament – to help rescue Pakistan from their dire position of 6-158 in the sudden-death final.

Having played and missed at a couple searing, swinging deliveries from fellow left-armer Mitchell Starc, Wahab was offered some advice from his Australia rival who told the Pakistan number eight "it's the little white thing – try and hit it".

As he ruminated over that bit of chirp, Wahab was approached by Watson who had been watching his opponent's battle to make contact from his fielding position at slip and asked "are you holding a bat?"

It was sufficient to get the then 29-year-old's hackles up, and Watson was duly reminded of his own hubris from the moment he scratched his guard on the hard and true Adelaide pitch.

"When he came into bat, I settled the score with him," Wahab would later recall.

"When I was batting Watson just came up to me and said 'are you holding a bat?' and that was going through my mind.

"I let him know that even he had a bat, but he couldn't touch the ball.

"I know that … he's not good on the short ball, so it was a plan that we discussed in the team meeting."

Wahab's first ball to the Australia veteran was a snorter that flashed past the grille of Watson's protective helmet, and saw the fired-up fast bowler follow-through to finish alongside the batter from where he theatrically applauded.

The next one was fuller and Watson wisely allowed it to pass by, but it yielded another round of mocking claps from Wahab who, by this time, had the 30,000-plus crowd roaring as the game hung in the balance.

It wasn't only the paying spectators and television viewers around the world who found themselves absorbed in the uncompromising contest.

Watching from the comparative safety of the non-striker's end, having already helped himself to a run-a-ball 24, was Australia's most influential and in-form batter, Steve Smith.

"I was actually loving it up the other end," Smith told cricket.com.au this week.

"I don't think I ever really faced two balls in a row against him (Wahab), I just kept hitting it off my hip and getting one, or finding a way to get a single and get down the other end.

"He bowled very quick with some short stuff, and he was fired up.

"I remember thinking 'jeez how good is this?' and Watto's like 'yeah no worries, you keep getting down the other end'."

While Smith also received his share of chin music from Wahab, the focus of the frenetic spell was Watson who found more than half the 21 deliveries flung at him to be short-pitched with a large proportion of those zeroing in on his head and shoulders.

But it was the eleventh of them which should have decided the skirmish, and quite feasibly the match.

With Australia 3-83, Watson (on four) parried a defensive pull shot high into the air and directly into the hands of Rahat Ali at deep backward-square who briefly held Pakistan's 2015 World Cup fate in his grasp, before it spilled out and bobbled across the Adelaide outfield.

"A bit of luck went my way to get through that spell," Watson later conceded.

"He was bowling good pace, but also the (left-arm) angle ... it was hard to be able to try and get my head out of the way.

"It kept following me.

"We knew he was a danger man, he had his tail up and he bowled some nasty balls on the money … a lot of them."

It was as much the unnerving line of attack that Wahab was able to find from over the wicket at the Riverbank End as it was the pace and hostility of his spell that saw it enter World Cup folklore.

Clarke had witnessed similar firepower unleashed barely a year earlier when Mitchell Johnson scythed through England in the second Ashes Test of what would eventually yield a 5-0 whitewash, and he saw similarities with Wahab on that early autumn evening.

"That’s as good as I’ve faced in one-day cricket for a long time," Clarke said at game's end, after Watson had carried Australia to victory with an unbeaten 64 that included the winning runs.

"(It) probably gave us a good look at what it would have been like to face Mitchell Johnson throughout the Ashes.

"Left-arm is always extra tough for a right-handed batsman because the angle of the ball is at your body the whole time, and he (Wahab) didn’t bowl too many bouncers that weren’t on the money."

As it transpired, the dropped catch not only effectively emboldened Watson, but also diminished Wahab.

Having pushed himself to the limit to get through Australia's number five and into the home team's lower-middle order, he continued for a further two overs but his pace began to flag and his accuracy suffered as fatigue set in.

A final indignity came with Australia 4-154 and requiring less than three per over for victory, when Wahab returned to for his second spell and forced Glenn Maxwell to miscue a ramp shot only for another chance to be squandered by Sohail Khan at third-man.

From there, Watson and Maxwell thrashed the remaining 62 runs from less than six overs to carry their team into a semi-final against India and, three days after that, the final that brought an emphatic seven-wicket win over New Zealand.

"It was an unbelievable spell of fast bowling," James Faulkner, man of the match in the showpiece final at the MCG, said of Wahab's spell this week.

"He should have had Watto with the dropped catch at fine leg, and it could have gone either way at the end of the game because it was so close in that period.

"That was a bit of a 'get out of jail' game for us.

"And a bit of a shake-up that we needed to be tested like that before the next two games."

In the aftermath of that quarter-final, Wahab was fined 50 per cent of his match fee for his overt aggression towards Watson, while the Australian had his pay packed lightened by 15 per cent for responding to his opponent's taunts.

The ICC's ruling led former West Indies great Brian Lara to offer to pay both men's penalties for what he considered to be over-zealous policing of the sort of on-field confrontation that fans craved.

"We need this in a sport that people are running away from, especially 50-over cricket," Lara said.

"I loved the exchange.

"It was above board as far as I'm concerned, and I can't wait to meet him – I want to meet with this Riaz guy.

"I'll pay the fine."

Watson and Wahab have since revisited their rivalry numerous times, most recently in a Pakistan Super League match between the Australian's Quetta Gladiators and his foe's Peshawar Zalmi at Rawalpindi earlier this month.

And for all the verbal jousting and pantomime histrionics squeezed into their on-field feud, the pair exchanged back slaps and handshakes after an epic game that paved Australia's way to a World Cup as well as ensuring Wahab Riaz became a known figure throughout the cricket world.

"That was one of the best spells I have ever bowled," Wahab would reflect.

"After he (Watson) had won the game for Australia, we hugged and congratulated each other.

"I said to him at that point of time 'you took the game away from us'.

"There is no doubt that the way he played – most of the time he was under pressure – but he held his nerve and took the Australian team to the semi-final.

"He is one of the players I really admire and like."

https://www.cricket.com.au/news/fea...-australia-pakistan-adelaide-smith/2020-03-28
 
Went to Juma thinking we are winning this - came back and told Rahat had dropped that catch...
 
I Didn’t Realise Wahab Riaz Could Bowl That Fast – Shane Watson Recalls 2015 WC Spell

Pakistan gun fast bowler Wahab Riaz bowled one of the fiercest spells in the history of the game when he breathed down the neck of Australia all-rounder Shane Watson in the 2015 World Cup quarterfinal match. In fact, it is known that Riaz was fired up to trouble Watson after he was sledged by the all-rounder. During Pakistan batting innings, Riaz kept missing the ball against Mitchell Starc.

Mitchell Starc had a few words to say to the batsman and Watson also sledged Riaz and said to him, “Do you have a hole in your bat? This fired up Wahab Riaz and he was all over Shane Watson when he came out to bat after the dismissal of Australian skipper Michael Clarke. Riaz bowled with his tail up as he bowled around the 150 km/h mark and bowled a lot of bouncers at the right-hander.

The left-arm was not only quick but he was also accurate and gave a hard time to the batsman. After almost every ball, Riaz would go near Watson and clap. In fact, Watson was dropped by Rahat Ali at deep fine leg when Riaz was able to produce a top edge from the batsman.

“One of the very special moments I had in my career,” Watson recalled during a Q&A session on Instagram, “even though at the time it wasn’t as enjoyable, but I look back at the quarterfinal against Pakistan with Wahab Riaz going absolutely crazy, bouncing the living daylights out of me, he bowled super accurate and he kept bouncing me.

“It was very silly and naive of me [that] I didn’t realize that Wahab Riaz could bowl that fast. I said something to him – because he kept playing and missing Mitchell Starc – so I ran past him and said, ‘Have you got a hole in your bat? Because you just keep missing the ball.’ And again, I didn’t realize he could bowl that fast so once I got out there, I got absolutely peppered.

However, Shane Watson went on to negate the ferocious spell as he scored an unbeaten knock of 64 runs off 66 balls. On the other hand, Wahab Riaz finished with two wickets for 54 runs. Australia went on to win the match by six wickets and then faced India in the semi-final of the 2015 World Cup.

https://sportzwiki.com/cricket/wahab-riaz-shane-watson
 
It looked good then but I think the spell is over rated on here. In fact Wahab’s spell in 2011 WC was much much better and important.

The guy he troubled scored an unbeaten half century, Smith seemed in total control, I mean for a country with fast bowling legacy like Pakistan it’s sad to see such pointless spells hype.
 
Overrated spell. Bowled a handful of admittedly pretty good bouncers but calling it "ferocious" and "one of the fiercest spells in the history of the game" is tremendously over doing it.
 
ahmadharis1 said:
Overrated spell. Bowled a handful of admittedly pretty good bouncers but calling it "ferocious" and "one of the fiercest spells in the history of the game" is tremendously over doing it.
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It's in odis so yes was good spell in tests it would have been standard spell
 
ahmadharis1 said:
Overrated spell. Bowled a handful of admittedly pretty good bouncers but calling it "ferocious" and "one of the fiercest spells in the history of the game" is tremendously over doing it.
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Watching a few highlights is different from when watching it when it was happening live.
 
It was pretty entertaining to watch. Riaz was fired up and Watson was having a tough time.
 
Even though Pakistan didn't win that match but people still talk about that amazing spell. It's no joke bowling 150ks bouncers continuously.He was brilliant in that world cup. He has always performed well in world cups and in that world cup he bowled the fastest ball at 154.5 ks.He is very underrated.
 
Exactly. We dont even have any test bowler with more than 200 wickets since 2000, also our overhyped pace bowling couldnt even drawn us a single test match in Australia forget about winning.
 
Invincible Gujjar said:
Even though Pakistan didn't win that match but people still talk about that amazing spell. It's no joke bowling 150ks bouncers continuously.He was brilliant in that world cup. He has always performed well in world cups and in that world cup he bowled the fastest ball at 154.5 ks.He is very underrated.
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your bowlers suck post 2010. Stop living in a delusional world. indian bowling is far superior.

win a test MATCH in australia and then talk.
 
Scattergun who performs once in a blue moon.
The fact that he was one of pakistans best pacer of the last decade tells us about how pakistan s bowling quality went south .
 
A mediocre bowler who was once compared with Mohammad Shami. While Shami has established himself as a great bowler across both the formats, Wahab has faded away.
 
Ab Fan said:
A mediocre bowler who was once compared with Mohammad Shami. While Shami has established himself as a great bowler across both the formats, Wahab has faded away.
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Mohammed shami is already better than Shoaib Akthar, let alone this dud cannon fodder called wahab who is a mediocre trash scattergun.
 
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Ahaha can remember waking up early to watch the game and missing college for the game.
 
The most important part of this duo was that Wahab didn't get Watson out.

He wasn't entirely to blame for that though was he :)
 
This was as effective as that spell Shoaib Akhtar bowled to Ricky Ponting in 1999.

Lots of 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' but the batsman won the contest in the end.
 
MenInG said:
Anyone remember this? :D
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I do. Saw i live on my newly bought Sony TV for 2015 WC.
Wahab was breathing fire.. Too bad Rahat could not hold on to simplest of the dollies.

Fascinating contest and a good WC. Final was a bit of a dud else most of the games were interesting.
 
Varun said:
This was as effective as that spell Shoaib Akhtar bowled to Ricky Ponting in 1999.

Lots of 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' but the batsman won the contest in the end.
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Summary of Pak in Australia. A lot of “Oohs” and 000s in the wins column.
 
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