Harris Sohail hasn't done anything special to warrant next-big-thing praises.
Considering the hype he came on the back of, he's shown nothing exceptional so far. Has serious troubles piercing the infield against pace bowling. Connects the ball beautifully but straight to fielders. When spinners come on, he's all at sea, can't rotate strike or play ground strokes. Ugly hoicks to clear circle where 90% of the time his bat tilts in his hands. The only pressure-release shot he got is that cut to the third man. Intelligent captains like Dhoni sense this, and he promptly installed a deep slip when Ashwin was on. Haris Sohail had no clue what to do.
He may improve with time, but for God's sake, please stop hyping
Give him time. By no means am I hyping him as the next thing, but looks a solid middle order batsmen in my view. Remember, he played a handful of matches and then all of a sudden WC in Australia.
Poor planning as usual by PCB. Instead of getting him to settle in a role, he gets thrown into the wolves.
Has serious spin issues right now, gets a bit bogged down because he hits good shots right to the fielder, and has trouble adjusting, but these are all things to expect out of a player who has just tested the waters at the international stage.
We don't have a world class batsmen, some players who could be very good, but no ABDV, Kohli or Amla sitting at home unfortunately. I do like Azam, and think he will be a good player, but won't hype him at all until he gets here, but neither will I say he will be a failure without playing a match.
We as Pakistani's are unfair to players, if they are seen as good, we hype them to be the next great thing, and if they aren't that, we get upset at them when they didn't dub themselves anything, they just go out there and play the game. We label them and then we get upset at the labels that we created?
LI you are more sensible than the rest, so ignore the noise of people overhyping and just let the kids play. Some will come good, some will not, but we need to keep the middle ground and neither attack them nor hype them before they are anything on either side of the equation. We won't know what a lot of these guys will be until 50-60+ matches at the international level.
Given our middle order woes since Inzi and Yousuf left, Harris looks a sound player who has issues but just needs time. We can't paint everyone with the same brush. A few bad matches here and there, and we label them. A bad shot and they are "the next Afridi" based on a couple of innings.
Being over or under critical of our players is the problem.
Until our domestic structure is worked out, this is what we have to work with, and we both know that glimpses have been shown. That Harris match winning performance against NZ for example.
Inzi in his first 30 or so matches was also in that average batsmen, low 30s average type player, and then turned it on. Of course not saying that Harris, or any of these guys will become that level of talent, but we just need to give them time to see what they actually are. Until I see enough matches to make a judgement, I will reserve it.
It is not like Akmal who came like a flash in the pan and is now nothing.
Maqsood had a poor WC, as many do, and has played 24 innings with a 33 average and a good SR. Neither good nor bad, but needs to be persisted to see what he can provide and if he will push forward.
We keep comparing him to Akmal which is completely unfair given how many matches he has played.
Let's hope for the best, not hype these guys, and wait until they have played enough matches to really make a concrete judgement.
