Good post. Notice how far above and beyond Naseem Shah is - definitely deserves to be persisted with, watch him develop into a real force over the next year or two as he gains more experience and adjusts his action to suit pace while staving off injuries.
Last year had especially flat tracks. If we consider that, then Usman Shinwari and Ehsan Adil were the only other two bowlers worth getting a look in, with Hassan not far behind. I’m excluding Rahat and Sohail due to age.
Looking at this year, Shinwari missed 90% of the season for Lanka Premier League which I think was the worst decision of his career. Ehsan Adil, meanwhile has gone missing and I think is benched right now due to bad performances despite the tracks being better than last year.
That leaves us with Hassan Ali from last year’s bunch, the only one whose numbers are fantastic. Watching him bowl, he passes the naked eye test too since he’s creating fantastic dismissals out of thin air on both helpful and unhelpful pitches.
As a result, it’s clear that we don’t have much bench strength in fast bowling. Hassan Ali and Waqas Maqsood are pretty much the only options on current form, with Hassan markedly better and already exposed to international cricket. It’s worth noting that Hasnain, Rauf haven’t played much first class cricket, with their pace they would be certain to trouble batsmen if they can get some discipline on their lines and lengths. But that’s pretty much it - the hope is that some emerging bowlers like Shahnawaz Dhani, Zeeshan Zameer, and Munir Riaz make their mark in domestic cricket soon. Sameen Gul has also been returning from injury, I believe - let’s see what he can do.
Naseem has not played enough to even merit a spot on the team. His test stats are horrific. Take away his 4 wicket haul and 5 wicket haul and he has managed just 10 wickets in 10 innings. That is poor stuff. His FC stats might look good but his international performances have failed to live up to the same expectation. He needs to go back into domestic cricket and learn how to bowl a proper line/length on the off stump and when to bowl full/short/length etc. He is too young, and I hate it when we use the international stage to help players learn. It's where they are to perform, and learn things along the way through those performances. He is learning the basics against teams like New Zealand, who will destroy him the first chance they get.
Hasan Ali should play for us in the tests against South Africa. He has looked a league apart from the rest of the bowlers in the QEA Trophy which has been dominated by batsmen this year. The pitches were also very flat, and he really impressed me with his disciplined bowling and top form. Usman Khan Shinwari got that one test against SL and was dropped afterwards, which made no sense. He should have had the chance to play against Bangladesh as well, it just shows how incompetent our management is.
Overall, the pacers we should keep around the test team for the first part of this decade are:
Shaheen Shah Afridi, Mohammad Abbas, Hasan Ali, Usman Khan Shinwari, Faheem Ashraf, Naseem Shah.
Depending on the conditions, opposition and the workload, we can easily create different combinations of fast bowlers to suit our needs. For example, Abbas might not be extremely useful on Pakistani pitches, hence, an attack of Shaheen, Hasan and Usman could be better.
I'd like to see what Faheem can do on similar wickets in the QEA. If he can take wickets and score runs, I think that he should also get to play at home instead of just in away games.
More importantly, I'd also like to see the introduction of a new spinner. It has to be a finger spinner as they offer a lot more control as opposed to leg spinners. Control is necessary from a spinner overseas. It is hard to take wickets, but if they can provide control to the captain, they can add pressure and run through some overs quickly as well.
Sajid Khan and Zafar Gohar are two names that come to my mind. Sajid is more of a specialist off spinner, and he is the better bowler out of the two. Zafar Gohar offers another dimension with the bat and is a left-arm spinner, and he isn't too bad as well.
Pakistan should adopt a similar setup as India do at home, by playing a left-arm off spinner and a right-arm off spinner.
The team moving forward should look like:
Shan Masood
Usman Salahuddin
Kamran Ghullam/Saud Shakeel
Babar Azam (c)
Fawad Alam
Mohammad Rizwan (wk)
Zafar Gohar/Shadab Khan
Hasan Ali
Shaheen Shah Afridi
Mohammad Abbas
Sajid Khan
That's a good team to have in the subcontinent. Alternatively, if the batting seems a bit light, you could play Shadab instead of Zafar, though he is unfit for the SA series.
