Focusing too much on conventional cricket hurting Pakistani bowlers?

[Savak]

Rashid Latif and Shoaib Akhtar made some very interesting points in todays Game on Hai episode. They highlighted that in the past the Pakistani bowlers who prevailed in countries like England, New Zealand, won a test match in Australia, South Africa played to their strengths like utlizing reverse swing, bowling doosras, leg spinners bowling googlies and flippers and unfortunately the current bowling attack are aimlessly bowling English county style line and length stuff, medium pace Abbass stuff which is just cannon fodder for a world class batsman like Williamson.

I for the life of me cannot understand why Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah who have both shown ability to bowl 145 km/hr plus in the past have been bowling English county line/lengths at reduced pace since the England tour and now on NZ wickets

More importantly i hope the PCB gives a set of targets and deliverables to the coaching staff at the High Performance Centres and Domestic teams that they need to be alert and should be scouting for bowlers who can offer some X factor which is very much needed in international cricket.

 

[Mamoon]

Convention bowlers are still running the show in Test cricket.

Australia - Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc
India - Bumrah, Shami, Ishant
England - Anderson, Broad, Archer, Woakes
South Africa - Rabada and the rest
New Zealand - Boult, Southee, Wagner

All these bowlers have conventional skills with no gimmicks. Bumrah’s action is unconventional but his bowling is conventional.

We all know why Pakistan managed to reverse-swing the ball prodigiously in the past. That level of ball-tampering is not possible today.

As far leg-spin variations are concerned, Mushtaq Ahmed and even Kaneria had more variations than Yasir and thus they were better than him on non-Asian pitches.

 

[UzmanBeast]

Convention bowlers are still running the show in Test cricket.

Australia - Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc
India - Bumrah, Shami, Ishant
England - Anderson, Broad, Archer, Woakes
South Africa - Rabada and the rest
New Zealand - Boult, Southee, Wagner

All these bowlers have conventional skills with no gimmicks. Bumrah’s action is unconventional but his bowling is conventional.

We all know why Pakistan managed to reverse-swing the ball prodigiously in the past. That level of ball-tampering is not possible today.

As far leg-spin variations are concerned, Mushtaq Ahmed and even Kaneria had more variations than Yasir and thus they were better than him on non-Asian pitches.

I disagree with Wagner being conventional, 50% of all his deliveries are short pitched or bouncers.

Everyone else you mentioned is correct.

What you need in addition to bowling line/length is the skillset to seam and swing the ball, which everyy bowler on that list can do.

For some reason, our bowlers have forgotten how to swing the ball (probably happened because of too much T20 cricket), and as a result, when the ball swings, the length never challenges the batsman.

This is why we pay a bowling coach to develop these skills, which is not happening right now unfortunately.

 

[Nikhil_cric]

Rashid Latif and Shoaib Akhtar made some very interesting points in todays Game on Hai episode. They highlighted that in the past the Pakistani bowlers who prevailed in countries like England, New Zealand, won a test match in Australia, South Africa played to their strengths like utlizing reverse swing, bowling doosras, leg spinners bowling googlies and flippers and unfortunately the current bowling attack are aimlessly bowling English county style line and length stuff, medium pace Abbass stuff which is just cannon fodder for a world class batsman like Williamson.

I for the life of me cannot understand why Shaheen Afridi and Naseem Shah who have both shown ability to bowl 145 km/hr plus in the past have been bowling English county line/lengths at reduced pace since the England tour and now on NZ wickets

More importantly i hope the PCB gives a set of targets and deliverables to the coaching staff at the High Performance Centres and Domestic teams that they need to be alert and should be scouting for bowlers who can offer some X factor which is very much needed in international cricket.

And that is what has hurt Pakistan cricket the most imo. This is where Asif was a big loss for Pakistan. He bowled a proper test match line/length and could swing and seam the ball as well conventionally.