GLORY OF '92
ODI Debutant
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2007
- Runs
- 12,418
PakPassion.net : Which game of Test cricket is your favourite and why?
Junaids : Overall, the Centenary Test in Melbourne in 1976-77 between Australia and England. It was thrilling, and it was the first time those of us in England had ever had same-day coverage of overseas cricket. And it produced the exact same result as the first ever Test had!
An honourable mention though for two other games.
The Bulawayo Test between Zimbabwe and England in 1996-97 was wonderful as entertainment, even though it wasn’t quality cricket. It ended up as the first Test ever drawn with the scores level, but England’s coach David Lloyd claimed to have “flippin’ murdered” Zimbabwe. It was the perfect template of how to get out of jail. Zimbabwe were 2 wickets down and still 30 in arrears shortly before the close on Day 4. On Day 5 the Test was in that wonderful period where every minute the team batting third survives and every run it scores effectively counts double. Eventually Zimbabwe set England 205 to win in 37 overs, which in Tests is surprisingly hard as one-day wides aren’t wides. (I think that the same non-rule should apply in ODI and T20 cricket too).
The other game was the Edgbaston Test between England and Pakistan in 1987. Very similar. Pakistan limped on until the final hour and set England 124 to win in 18 overs. It ended just like the Bulawayo match – Imran Khan and Wasim Akram bowled very wide and kept the scoring rate down to guarantee the draw.
PakPassion.net : What's your opinion on a 10 team World Cup?
Junaids : Terrible. Awful.
I would like 4 groups of 4, each playing one another once. Then the top two teams go through to the Super Eights.
At last year's World Cup in football, do you know which two teams came closest to beating the eventual champions, Germany? Ghana and Algeria. That's why you have to include the minnows and give them at least 3 matches, but make sure that they only get a fourth match by earning it on the field.
The underlying problem is that even Ireland cannot improve on a diet of just ODIs and T20s. They just can’t bowl people out to save their lives, because you only learn how to in First Class cricket. I’d like to see Ireland and Scotland added to the County Championship and all English domestic competitions.
PakPassion.net : Do you have any connection with Pakistan?
Truthfully, no. But my (British) birth certificate lists my Dad's birthplace as "Pakistan" because he was born in Dacca, British India but by the time I was born Dacca was in East Pakistan and my Dad and his family were back in England. (I've no connection with Bangladesh either).
The real connection is cricket. I grew up in England in the 1970s when County Cricket hoarded world superstars like the IPL does now.
We only had three TV channels in England then, and every Sunday afternoon there was the John Player League, a 40 over county competition. Each county in the 1970s had several world class overseas players, and the most exciting of them were from the West Indies, Pakistan and South Africa. Consequently, like most Englishmen my age, I grew up with an affection for every cricketing country but especially those ones. Hence the love that David Lloyd - who played then - has for Pakistan cricket and that Mike Atherton - who went to school with me - has for Pakistan cricket too.
I enjoy friendly rivalry in cricket but I just don’t get the sort of petty nationalism that prevails now. It makes absolute sense to me for Kevin Pietersen to have friends in the South African dressing room, just as the former team-mates Bishan Bedi and Mushtaq Mohammad are like brothers. I love it when ANY country unearths a golden generation. Except Australia! And even then I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy watching their team of a decade ago.
PakPassion.net : Who are your favorite players of all time and why? Please be considerate about us young ones and not name players from the fifties!
Junaids : I didn’t watch anybody play cricket before the 1970s. And I was just a kid until just before Tendulkar debuted. So up until 1990, this list is a mixture of whom I most enjoyed and whom I most feared!
Batting: Barry Richards and Viv Richards were the best batsmen that I have seen by a very wide distance. But I loved watching VVS Laxman, Lara and Tendulkar too.
Bowling: Malcolm Marshall was the best by miles. As wide a margin as between Bradman and the next batsman. I also enjoyed watching Shane Warne, in spite of his links with bookies and his failed drugs test.
Today, I love watching FAF du Plessis bat all day to try to save a Test match. His old schoolmate AB De Villiers is a much classier batsman, but I love the guts and "never say die" attitude of FAF. He inspires me. For me there is nothing quite like those gusty rearguard match-saving efforts. I'll never forget Stuart Broad's 6 from 77 balls at Eden Park two years ago to save the Test. It was better than his 169 against Pakistan's much better attack, because of the pressure and the high stakes.
My favourite current bowler is Mitchell Johnson. Even during his wilderness years I was his biggest champion. There should always be a role for a left-armer who can bowl 150K and average 22 with the bat. He had that brief period when he went off the boil, but Micky Arthur was a fool to exclude him after he roughed up the Sri Lankans and did pretty well against South Africa when he was supposedly a shadow of his former self.
PakPassion.net : Should T20s be killed off or do they have something to give the game of cricket?
Junaids : T20 should definitely NOT be killed off. But it should be given windows so that it cannot cannibalise the West Indian and English seasons.
I think T20 is a terrific tool for getting youngsters into cricket and for parting ignorant adults from their money. It’s a bit like the 1970s 40 over games I described.
It is an adornment which adds to the game and introduces people to it in a dumbed down and digestible form.
But it also needs to be severely regulated. Australia has stopped producing decent batsmen since the Big Bash displaced the Sheffield Shield. And even more bizarrely, India has stopped producing even mediocre spinners since the IPL arrived.
It’s not good enough to just play what makes the most money if you actually neglect the game itself. It risks killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I would have 3 four week T20 windows in every calendar year, and make no player eligible to play in more than 2 of them. And, like football, I would cap every player at 2 domestic teams per calendar year.
I have a major problem with American-style franchised sport, in every sport in which it is used. I think it’s rubbish. I hate salary caps – I think they force mediocrity – and any team game in which there are no away fans strikes me as being a diminished experience. That’s why sports which have local derbies are always so good.
I think that all cricketers should be signed up to the ICC, not private or national leagues. And the ICC could then assign them to teams.
I think that auctions are a terrible idea for a sport where the most money is generated in a country rife with corruption. How can we be sure that fixers don't use inflated auction prices as a way of legally paying players for illegal services rendered? The answer is, we can't.
PakPassion.net : Who is the greatest Indian batsman ever in your opinion?
Junaids : Sachin Tendulkar, a whisker ahead of Sunil Gavaskar and a long way ahead of any Pakistani. He had no technical flaws at all, as I've written endlessly his only problem was when he lost hope in the fourth innings and gave up. He was a wonderful batsman, absolutely wonderful
I think that Mohinder Amarnath hit the highest heights ever hit by any batsman, in 1982-83 in the West Indies. But Tendulkar stayed a superb batsman for over 20 years. I only highlight his weaknesses because I get a bit sick of his worshippers trying to claim that he was even better than he was. I find that a bit disrespectful to Rahul Dravid, to be honest, who was also a magnificent cricketer.
Then again, people ignore Ranjitsinhji because of the murder allegations around his succession to become the Maharaja of Nawanagar and because of his other legal problems in Sussex. But he averaged a touch under 45 at the turn of the twentieth century, when for example Victor Trumper averaged a lot less.
PakPassion.net : Who is the greatest ever all rounder in Test cricket?
Junaids : Sir Garfield Sobers, without a shadow of a doubt. One of the ten greatest batsmen of all time and an international class left-arm quick bowler, slow left-arm bowler and even a Chinaman bowler. And a great catcher. Probably the only cricketer even greater than Don Bradman.
PakPassion.net : How did you find PakPassion.net and can you explain your posting style?
Junaids : I often Google matters to do with cricket, and PakPassion kept coming up as a suggested site.
I have always thought that if you are writing a commentary or editorial it is much more interesting if you articulate forceful views and are thought-provoking. It makes Boycott and Vaughan fascinating to read.
So I ham it up a bit in my posts. In real life my reputation is for being meek and mild and a consummate diplomat, but on this site – and Cricinfo, where I rarely post now – I let my hair down and try to provoke.
I’ve written harsh things about Paul Downton and Peter Moores and Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss recently, but I know that if I met them – or if they knew who was writing, like they do with Boycott – I would take a much more conciliatory tone.
Cricket for me is like a Patek Philippe watch slogan. ‘You never actually own it. You merely look after it for the next generation”.
That means that we need to preserve what is good while allowing the game to evolve.
That means that it's fine to allow T20 to join ODIs and Tests, but that no one form should ever be allowed to wipe out another. It was beyond disgraceful when the ICC allowed the World Test Championship to be cancelled.
As a 10 year old I used to argue violently with the fathers of my schoolfriends about Kerry Packer. They thought that he was a barbarian destroying cricket with his “Pyjama cricket circus”. I thought that it was fine to invigorate the game with new innovations so long as you protect and develop the traditional game.
PakPassion.net : What's the story behind your username?
Junaids : I actually intended to have a joke name – Junaids ............! But this site is incredibly well moderated, and even my username got moderated. My real name is very English, and some of you know it from stuff I did earlier in my life.
PakPassion.net : Where do you see subcontinent cricket in 5 years time, not as a whole but individually for all the teams?
Junaids : India ahead of Sri Lanka in ODIs, with Pakistan just ahead of an improving Bangladesh. Same with T20s.
I don’t see much hope for India or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka in away Tests because they can’t get people out and they have no bowlers emerging who can. Pakistan can, but their emerging batting seems even worse than Australia’s, and that’s quite a feat.
Test cricket outside Asia is all about fast bowling. There will be short periods when India's batting makes them hard to beat outside Asia, but Pakistan will almost always be the top Asian team outside Asia simply because they will always have the best pace attack of the Asian teams. That is never going to change.
PakPassion.net : How is your cricketing knowledge so vast?
Junaids : Thanks for the compliment. I just spend a lot of time watching it and listening to it on the radio and I have for 40 years!
I also enjoy reading about the history of the game, and I never stop learning. It’s only this year that I’ve realised that Alan Davidson really was as good as Wasim Akram and that Ray Lindwall really was even better than Dale Steyn!
PakPassion.net : Greatest cricketer Pakistan has ever produced?
Junaids : Imran Khan is the greatest cricketer that Asia has ever produced. He was astonishingly good.
He was a fine batsman and a superb fast bowler but he was also the best captain that I have seen since Ian Chappell. He took a team of chronically spineless players and made them almost impossible to beat in Tests for a decade.
He had four contemporaries who were each all-time great all-rounders – Ian Botham, Clive Rice, Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev. And he was the best of the five, by some distance. It wasn't even close.
PakPassion.net : What happened to English cricket after 1992? Before that they were almost head to head with Australia and played semi finals in all 5 World Cups now Australia has 5 World cups and England still none!
Junaids : World Cup cricket was played in whites with a red ball on normal pitches until the 1992 World Cup – and three of the four had been staged in England.
Even now, hardly anyone in English cricket has worked out that ODIs are now a completely different game played on flat pitches with no lateral movement. They are just starting to get that flat track bullies like Alex Hales and Jos Buttler are the way forward, even though they are mediocre at long-form cricket.
Cricket is dying in England.
Until around 1960 it was ahead of football as England’s national sport, even in poorer demographics. Two things changed that - football abolished the maximum wage - the equivalent of a salary cap - and moved to floodlit night matches. I think that Test cricket needs to move to become a night game too.
Now cricket is invisible to English boys unless they go to private schools and their parents subscribe to Sky TV.
Cricket and rugby union are just fine with fewer than a dozen core countries - the need is not to expand the number of countries but the base in those countries. But expanding the base requires short-term financial sacrifice to have some free-to-air international cricket on TV, unlike in England.
Here in Australia, between international cricket and the Big Bash there is wall-to-wall free-to-air TV coverage of cricket from November to February. So cricket is in the blood of every social class, and women are very knowledgable about it.
PakPassion.net : Where do you hail from and what is your profession?
Junaids : I come from the outskirts of Manchester, or in cricketing terms Lancashire. I come from a fairly privileged background and I went to Manchester Grammar School where I was in the same year as Michael Atherton and a couple of years ahead of John Crawley.
At school, the likes of Atherton, the three Crawley brothers and Gary Yates were a million times better at cricket than I was, and I couldn’t get anywhere near the* school team.
I moved down to London to attend medical school and now I’m a doctor in Australia.
PakPassion.net : Barry Richards vs Malcolm Marshall, Ambrose, Holding, Joel Garner
Junaids : Even Viv Richards found West Indies domestic cricket hard against those bowlers. Ambrose and Garner were almost identical - very similar to Glenn McGrath. Holding was very quick. But Marshall was the complete fast bowler- very quick but also able to move it in the air and off the seam.
Barry Richards was before Marshall and Ambrose’s time. But he was the best batsman in the world from 1970-1979 – he proved it in Packer’s Supertests, when he returned to top class cricket after almost a decade of Apartheid-induced exclusion and averaged 79 compared with 72 in his earlier, official Tests. I have never seen a better batsman.*
Think about it. He averaged in the 70s against top bowling attacks and looked miles better than the other great batsmen of the 1970s. I have always had a sneaking suspicion that he is the only batsman who has come close to Bradman's level.
How would he perform over the course of a series?
Barry Richards was one of those players who went up a level against the best opposition and lost interest when it was too easy.
PakPassion.net : Who are your favourite young players?
Junaids : Best young wicketkeeper-batsman? Quinton de Kock
Best young fast bowler – Mohammad Amir and Pat Cummins.
Best young spinner – he’s not so young, but I’d say Yasir Shah.
Best young batsman – Kane Williamson (as Kohli and Rahane are a bit too old).
PakPassion.net : What are your thoughts on the current Pakistan Test team? And how can it be improved?
Junaids : It's a stopgap dour, negative team, built to tread water while your best players were unavailable. Your bowling will be okay, but you desperately need to replace Younis and Misbah before you play outside Asia. They have been wonderful servants and are still good on flat tracks, but at their age they cannot hope to have the reflexes to cope with late movement and extra bounce. Next year you play Tests in New Zealand, England and Australia. You simply have to give the likes of Babar Azam and Umar Akmal a run of Tests now, because you will need them outside Asia next year. I'm not even going to discuss Mohammad Hafeez, because it angers me that such a technically inadequate batsman is still being picked and does well on dead Asian wickets, and is blocking the development of someone - anyone - with a better chance of success outside Asia next year.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the progress of Yasir Shah. Good leg-spinners are like gold in Test cricket, and he has improved massively under the tutelage of Mushtaq Ahmed. I know the opposition batting wasn't that great, but the things he was doing with the ball in Bangladesh astonished me.
PakPassion.net : Your thoughts on Umar Akmal, Nasir Jamshed & Ahmed Shehzad?
Junaids : Umar Akmal is an immature fool, but a supremely gifted one. He should play every Test until he learns how to build an innings, because he isn't going to learn playing domestic rubbish and limited overs cricket. And you need to understand that you probably won't produce a batsman with his technical ability for another 20 years. Persist with him.
I have no hope at all for Nasir Jamshed. He is far too technically deficient. He has scored some runs on flat ODI wickets where his lack of footwork wasn't exposed, but he will never, ever be an international class cricketer. Sorry.
I fear for Ahmed Shehzad too. His foot movement is almost as poor as Jamshed’s. He is similar to Umar Akmal in that he listens to fools who wasted their own talent and so he does not learn.
PakPassion.net : How do you see Pakistan's future?
Junaids : Sadly I don’t see any future for playing international cricket in Pakistan. I wish I did.
I think that you will always be okay for bowling talent, but there is a major problem with your production line of batsmen. You need to play A team tours outside Asia and you need to play at least 2-3 First Class side matches every time you tour outside Asia. The main reason why all touring teams tend to lose heavily everywhere nowadays is because they don’t arrive early enough to play side matches and make the necessary technical adjustments for local conditions.
PakPassion.net : What brings you to PakPassion?
Junaids : A love of international cricket, and a love of Pakistan cricket which was created by enjoying watching Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Intikhab Alam, Mushtaq and Sadiq Mohammad, Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz playing county cricket in England in the 1970s!
Junaids : Overall, the Centenary Test in Melbourne in 1976-77 between Australia and England. It was thrilling, and it was the first time those of us in England had ever had same-day coverage of overseas cricket. And it produced the exact same result as the first ever Test had!
An honourable mention though for two other games.
The Bulawayo Test between Zimbabwe and England in 1996-97 was wonderful as entertainment, even though it wasn’t quality cricket. It ended up as the first Test ever drawn with the scores level, but England’s coach David Lloyd claimed to have “flippin’ murdered” Zimbabwe. It was the perfect template of how to get out of jail. Zimbabwe were 2 wickets down and still 30 in arrears shortly before the close on Day 4. On Day 5 the Test was in that wonderful period where every minute the team batting third survives and every run it scores effectively counts double. Eventually Zimbabwe set England 205 to win in 37 overs, which in Tests is surprisingly hard as one-day wides aren’t wides. (I think that the same non-rule should apply in ODI and T20 cricket too).
The other game was the Edgbaston Test between England and Pakistan in 1987. Very similar. Pakistan limped on until the final hour and set England 124 to win in 18 overs. It ended just like the Bulawayo match – Imran Khan and Wasim Akram bowled very wide and kept the scoring rate down to guarantee the draw.
PakPassion.net : What's your opinion on a 10 team World Cup?
Junaids : Terrible. Awful.
I would like 4 groups of 4, each playing one another once. Then the top two teams go through to the Super Eights.
At last year's World Cup in football, do you know which two teams came closest to beating the eventual champions, Germany? Ghana and Algeria. That's why you have to include the minnows and give them at least 3 matches, but make sure that they only get a fourth match by earning it on the field.
The underlying problem is that even Ireland cannot improve on a diet of just ODIs and T20s. They just can’t bowl people out to save their lives, because you only learn how to in First Class cricket. I’d like to see Ireland and Scotland added to the County Championship and all English domestic competitions.
PakPassion.net : Do you have any connection with Pakistan?
Truthfully, no. But my (British) birth certificate lists my Dad's birthplace as "Pakistan" because he was born in Dacca, British India but by the time I was born Dacca was in East Pakistan and my Dad and his family were back in England. (I've no connection with Bangladesh either).
The real connection is cricket. I grew up in England in the 1970s when County Cricket hoarded world superstars like the IPL does now.
We only had three TV channels in England then, and every Sunday afternoon there was the John Player League, a 40 over county competition. Each county in the 1970s had several world class overseas players, and the most exciting of them were from the West Indies, Pakistan and South Africa. Consequently, like most Englishmen my age, I grew up with an affection for every cricketing country but especially those ones. Hence the love that David Lloyd - who played then - has for Pakistan cricket and that Mike Atherton - who went to school with me - has for Pakistan cricket too.
I enjoy friendly rivalry in cricket but I just don’t get the sort of petty nationalism that prevails now. It makes absolute sense to me for Kevin Pietersen to have friends in the South African dressing room, just as the former team-mates Bishan Bedi and Mushtaq Mohammad are like brothers. I love it when ANY country unearths a golden generation. Except Australia! And even then I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy watching their team of a decade ago.
PakPassion.net : Who are your favorite players of all time and why? Please be considerate about us young ones and not name players from the fifties!
Junaids : I didn’t watch anybody play cricket before the 1970s. And I was just a kid until just before Tendulkar debuted. So up until 1990, this list is a mixture of whom I most enjoyed and whom I most feared!
Batting: Barry Richards and Viv Richards were the best batsmen that I have seen by a very wide distance. But I loved watching VVS Laxman, Lara and Tendulkar too.
Bowling: Malcolm Marshall was the best by miles. As wide a margin as between Bradman and the next batsman. I also enjoyed watching Shane Warne, in spite of his links with bookies and his failed drugs test.
Today, I love watching FAF du Plessis bat all day to try to save a Test match. His old schoolmate AB De Villiers is a much classier batsman, but I love the guts and "never say die" attitude of FAF. He inspires me. For me there is nothing quite like those gusty rearguard match-saving efforts. I'll never forget Stuart Broad's 6 from 77 balls at Eden Park two years ago to save the Test. It was better than his 169 against Pakistan's much better attack, because of the pressure and the high stakes.
My favourite current bowler is Mitchell Johnson. Even during his wilderness years I was his biggest champion. There should always be a role for a left-armer who can bowl 150K and average 22 with the bat. He had that brief period when he went off the boil, but Micky Arthur was a fool to exclude him after he roughed up the Sri Lankans and did pretty well against South Africa when he was supposedly a shadow of his former self.
PakPassion.net : Should T20s be killed off or do they have something to give the game of cricket?
Junaids : T20 should definitely NOT be killed off. But it should be given windows so that it cannot cannibalise the West Indian and English seasons.
I think T20 is a terrific tool for getting youngsters into cricket and for parting ignorant adults from their money. It’s a bit like the 1970s 40 over games I described.
It is an adornment which adds to the game and introduces people to it in a dumbed down and digestible form.
But it also needs to be severely regulated. Australia has stopped producing decent batsmen since the Big Bash displaced the Sheffield Shield. And even more bizarrely, India has stopped producing even mediocre spinners since the IPL arrived.
It’s not good enough to just play what makes the most money if you actually neglect the game itself. It risks killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I would have 3 four week T20 windows in every calendar year, and make no player eligible to play in more than 2 of them. And, like football, I would cap every player at 2 domestic teams per calendar year.
I have a major problem with American-style franchised sport, in every sport in which it is used. I think it’s rubbish. I hate salary caps – I think they force mediocrity – and any team game in which there are no away fans strikes me as being a diminished experience. That’s why sports which have local derbies are always so good.
I think that all cricketers should be signed up to the ICC, not private or national leagues. And the ICC could then assign them to teams.
I think that auctions are a terrible idea for a sport where the most money is generated in a country rife with corruption. How can we be sure that fixers don't use inflated auction prices as a way of legally paying players for illegal services rendered? The answer is, we can't.
PakPassion.net : Who is the greatest Indian batsman ever in your opinion?
Junaids : Sachin Tendulkar, a whisker ahead of Sunil Gavaskar and a long way ahead of any Pakistani. He had no technical flaws at all, as I've written endlessly his only problem was when he lost hope in the fourth innings and gave up. He was a wonderful batsman, absolutely wonderful
I think that Mohinder Amarnath hit the highest heights ever hit by any batsman, in 1982-83 in the West Indies. But Tendulkar stayed a superb batsman for over 20 years. I only highlight his weaknesses because I get a bit sick of his worshippers trying to claim that he was even better than he was. I find that a bit disrespectful to Rahul Dravid, to be honest, who was also a magnificent cricketer.
Then again, people ignore Ranjitsinhji because of the murder allegations around his succession to become the Maharaja of Nawanagar and because of his other legal problems in Sussex. But he averaged a touch under 45 at the turn of the twentieth century, when for example Victor Trumper averaged a lot less.
PakPassion.net : Who is the greatest ever all rounder in Test cricket?
Junaids : Sir Garfield Sobers, without a shadow of a doubt. One of the ten greatest batsmen of all time and an international class left-arm quick bowler, slow left-arm bowler and even a Chinaman bowler. And a great catcher. Probably the only cricketer even greater than Don Bradman.
PakPassion.net : How did you find PakPassion.net and can you explain your posting style?
Junaids : I often Google matters to do with cricket, and PakPassion kept coming up as a suggested site.
I have always thought that if you are writing a commentary or editorial it is much more interesting if you articulate forceful views and are thought-provoking. It makes Boycott and Vaughan fascinating to read.
So I ham it up a bit in my posts. In real life my reputation is for being meek and mild and a consummate diplomat, but on this site – and Cricinfo, where I rarely post now – I let my hair down and try to provoke.
I’ve written harsh things about Paul Downton and Peter Moores and Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss recently, but I know that if I met them – or if they knew who was writing, like they do with Boycott – I would take a much more conciliatory tone.
Cricket for me is like a Patek Philippe watch slogan. ‘You never actually own it. You merely look after it for the next generation”.
That means that we need to preserve what is good while allowing the game to evolve.
That means that it's fine to allow T20 to join ODIs and Tests, but that no one form should ever be allowed to wipe out another. It was beyond disgraceful when the ICC allowed the World Test Championship to be cancelled.
As a 10 year old I used to argue violently with the fathers of my schoolfriends about Kerry Packer. They thought that he was a barbarian destroying cricket with his “Pyjama cricket circus”. I thought that it was fine to invigorate the game with new innovations so long as you protect and develop the traditional game.
PakPassion.net : What's the story behind your username?
Junaids : I actually intended to have a joke name – Junaids ............! But this site is incredibly well moderated, and even my username got moderated. My real name is very English, and some of you know it from stuff I did earlier in my life.
PakPassion.net : Where do you see subcontinent cricket in 5 years time, not as a whole but individually for all the teams?
Junaids : India ahead of Sri Lanka in ODIs, with Pakistan just ahead of an improving Bangladesh. Same with T20s.
I don’t see much hope for India or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka in away Tests because they can’t get people out and they have no bowlers emerging who can. Pakistan can, but their emerging batting seems even worse than Australia’s, and that’s quite a feat.
Test cricket outside Asia is all about fast bowling. There will be short periods when India's batting makes them hard to beat outside Asia, but Pakistan will almost always be the top Asian team outside Asia simply because they will always have the best pace attack of the Asian teams. That is never going to change.
PakPassion.net : How is your cricketing knowledge so vast?
Junaids : Thanks for the compliment. I just spend a lot of time watching it and listening to it on the radio and I have for 40 years!
I also enjoy reading about the history of the game, and I never stop learning. It’s only this year that I’ve realised that Alan Davidson really was as good as Wasim Akram and that Ray Lindwall really was even better than Dale Steyn!
PakPassion.net : Greatest cricketer Pakistan has ever produced?
Junaids : Imran Khan is the greatest cricketer that Asia has ever produced. He was astonishingly good.
He was a fine batsman and a superb fast bowler but he was also the best captain that I have seen since Ian Chappell. He took a team of chronically spineless players and made them almost impossible to beat in Tests for a decade.
He had four contemporaries who were each all-time great all-rounders – Ian Botham, Clive Rice, Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev. And he was the best of the five, by some distance. It wasn't even close.
PakPassion.net : What happened to English cricket after 1992? Before that they were almost head to head with Australia and played semi finals in all 5 World Cups now Australia has 5 World cups and England still none!
Junaids : World Cup cricket was played in whites with a red ball on normal pitches until the 1992 World Cup – and three of the four had been staged in England.
Even now, hardly anyone in English cricket has worked out that ODIs are now a completely different game played on flat pitches with no lateral movement. They are just starting to get that flat track bullies like Alex Hales and Jos Buttler are the way forward, even though they are mediocre at long-form cricket.
Cricket is dying in England.
Until around 1960 it was ahead of football as England’s national sport, even in poorer demographics. Two things changed that - football abolished the maximum wage - the equivalent of a salary cap - and moved to floodlit night matches. I think that Test cricket needs to move to become a night game too.
Now cricket is invisible to English boys unless they go to private schools and their parents subscribe to Sky TV.
Cricket and rugby union are just fine with fewer than a dozen core countries - the need is not to expand the number of countries but the base in those countries. But expanding the base requires short-term financial sacrifice to have some free-to-air international cricket on TV, unlike in England.
Here in Australia, between international cricket and the Big Bash there is wall-to-wall free-to-air TV coverage of cricket from November to February. So cricket is in the blood of every social class, and women are very knowledgable about it.
PakPassion.net : Where do you hail from and what is your profession?
Junaids : I come from the outskirts of Manchester, or in cricketing terms Lancashire. I come from a fairly privileged background and I went to Manchester Grammar School where I was in the same year as Michael Atherton and a couple of years ahead of John Crawley.
At school, the likes of Atherton, the three Crawley brothers and Gary Yates were a million times better at cricket than I was, and I couldn’t get anywhere near the* school team.
I moved down to London to attend medical school and now I’m a doctor in Australia.
PakPassion.net : Barry Richards vs Malcolm Marshall, Ambrose, Holding, Joel Garner
Junaids : Even Viv Richards found West Indies domestic cricket hard against those bowlers. Ambrose and Garner were almost identical - very similar to Glenn McGrath. Holding was very quick. But Marshall was the complete fast bowler- very quick but also able to move it in the air and off the seam.
Barry Richards was before Marshall and Ambrose’s time. But he was the best batsman in the world from 1970-1979 – he proved it in Packer’s Supertests, when he returned to top class cricket after almost a decade of Apartheid-induced exclusion and averaged 79 compared with 72 in his earlier, official Tests. I have never seen a better batsman.*
Think about it. He averaged in the 70s against top bowling attacks and looked miles better than the other great batsmen of the 1970s. I have always had a sneaking suspicion that he is the only batsman who has come close to Bradman's level.
How would he perform over the course of a series?
Barry Richards was one of those players who went up a level against the best opposition and lost interest when it was too easy.
PakPassion.net : Who are your favourite young players?
Junaids : Best young wicketkeeper-batsman? Quinton de Kock
Best young fast bowler – Mohammad Amir and Pat Cummins.
Best young spinner – he’s not so young, but I’d say Yasir Shah.
Best young batsman – Kane Williamson (as Kohli and Rahane are a bit too old).
PakPassion.net : What are your thoughts on the current Pakistan Test team? And how can it be improved?
Junaids : It's a stopgap dour, negative team, built to tread water while your best players were unavailable. Your bowling will be okay, but you desperately need to replace Younis and Misbah before you play outside Asia. They have been wonderful servants and are still good on flat tracks, but at their age they cannot hope to have the reflexes to cope with late movement and extra bounce. Next year you play Tests in New Zealand, England and Australia. You simply have to give the likes of Babar Azam and Umar Akmal a run of Tests now, because you will need them outside Asia next year. I'm not even going to discuss Mohammad Hafeez, because it angers me that such a technically inadequate batsman is still being picked and does well on dead Asian wickets, and is blocking the development of someone - anyone - with a better chance of success outside Asia next year.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the progress of Yasir Shah. Good leg-spinners are like gold in Test cricket, and he has improved massively under the tutelage of Mushtaq Ahmed. I know the opposition batting wasn't that great, but the things he was doing with the ball in Bangladesh astonished me.
PakPassion.net : Your thoughts on Umar Akmal, Nasir Jamshed & Ahmed Shehzad?
Junaids : Umar Akmal is an immature fool, but a supremely gifted one. He should play every Test until he learns how to build an innings, because he isn't going to learn playing domestic rubbish and limited overs cricket. And you need to understand that you probably won't produce a batsman with his technical ability for another 20 years. Persist with him.
I have no hope at all for Nasir Jamshed. He is far too technically deficient. He has scored some runs on flat ODI wickets where his lack of footwork wasn't exposed, but he will never, ever be an international class cricketer. Sorry.
I fear for Ahmed Shehzad too. His foot movement is almost as poor as Jamshed’s. He is similar to Umar Akmal in that he listens to fools who wasted their own talent and so he does not learn.
PakPassion.net : How do you see Pakistan's future?
Junaids : Sadly I don’t see any future for playing international cricket in Pakistan. I wish I did.
I think that you will always be okay for bowling talent, but there is a major problem with your production line of batsmen. You need to play A team tours outside Asia and you need to play at least 2-3 First Class side matches every time you tour outside Asia. The main reason why all touring teams tend to lose heavily everywhere nowadays is because they don’t arrive early enough to play side matches and make the necessary technical adjustments for local conditions.
PakPassion.net : What brings you to PakPassion?
Junaids : A love of international cricket, and a love of Pakistan cricket which was created by enjoying watching Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Intikhab Alam, Mushtaq and Sadiq Mohammad, Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz playing county cricket in England in the 1970s!
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