I won't say he is an 'inferior' version, but he's probably in the same class.
A young Farhat was considered as a future star, but he did not have the hunger and desire to succeed at this level, and his marriage did not help his career either as people simply started to hate on him because of who is father-in-law was.
A Test average of 32 after 40 Tests looks awful, but people need to realize that he played 26 of those Tests in England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
He played very little cricket in the sub-continent and has a very good record in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Speaking of little, he has only played 1 Test in the UAE.
I really don't think Shehzad can fare any better overseas than Farhat, in fact so far, he has nothing to show for outside the UAE. Has toured Sri Lanka twice and failed both times.
His average is quite misleading at the moment given the number of matches he has played and even that is heading only one way - from 47 to 43, will probably be in the 30's soon.
Farhat has played very few ODIs because Salman Butt was comfortably our best ODI opener in the 2000's and because of the high number of middle-order batsmen and all-rounders, we played Kamran as an opener, who was quite handy at the top in his peak, and we also tried to do something different at times by blooding in the likes of Nazir etc. but it did not work.
From 2004-2009, Salman Butt was pretty much untouchable in ODIs and he would probably have broken Saeed Anwar's 20 hundreds mark if it wasn't for the spot-fixing.
Farhat was his stand-by during this time and simply didn't get enough chances, while Hafeez stepped up after Salman Butt's ban and made the opening slot his own.
However, we need to consider the fact that Shehzad did indeed outperform Farhat in the last couple of years. After Shehzad got dropped in 2011, Farhat got a decent run in the team and later on, he also replaced the badly out of form Jamshed but on both occasions, he simply did not grab his opportunities like Shehzad did when he returned to the team in 2013.
Shehzad is a lot more similar to Upul Tharanga, in fact strikingly similar - the Sri Lankan has played 180 ODIs, scored 5,000 runs and 13 hundreds, but his average/SR is mediocre like Shehzad, and he hasn't really managed to convince that he is good enough for this level in spite of having his moments in patches.
Same is the case with Shehzad, has shown glimpses of brilliance at times but after 6 years and 70 ODIs, he really hasn't proven his doubters wrong and it is not harsh to call him an average batsman, based on what he has produced so far and his career seems to heading Tharanga's way, except that he may not last for 180 ODIs especially with new kids on the block like Aslam, Mukhtar, Imran Butt, Siddiq etc. all potential candidates for his spot in the future.
He has only himself to blame though - he had a free run for 2 years but did not work on his flaws. At one point, he was even tipped as the future captain before his lack of discipline, particularly the Dilshan incident took him out of the equation.
He could have been in Azhar's position today, i.e. first-choice opener, ODI captain and next in line for Test captaincy, had he shown maturity and willingness to improve.
He is a product of the system and has received ample opportunities and support at every level, but all that means nothing when you are too big for your boots and consider yourself better than you actually are, and he is guilty of that.
if he is frustrating to eyes then no body can please u 
