class bowler, as my humnaam said very talented, but career cut short
What do you say about Qasim Umar bro, in my opinion the first ever opener to bring out the idea of attacking in the first 10 overs
Do you remember the american cup in the 80s?
Brother,
You mentioned 'American Cup in the 80s' - it was actually the Perth Challenge Cup, a four-nation tourney to celebrate America's Cup, which is yachting race, being held along Western Australian coastline. It was a round-robin series between England (eventual winners, winning all games including the final), Pakistan (finalists, beat Australia and the West Indies), West Indies (won only against Australia) and Australia (who lost all their games) with the final being played out between the top two teams.
Qasim Umar was used as an ODI opener in all these four games. However, these were the only four occasions that he ever opened for Pakistan in ODIs. He was an important player of fast-bowling for Pakistan on bouncy wickets but was basically hampered by his inconsistency.
Imran Khan made him open the innings with Shoaib on two counts:
1. Mohsin Khan's career was over and Mudassar Nazar was in poor form
2. The last game before before this series was played was a low-scoring match in Sharjah, where Imran made Shoaib (a regular opener in FC cricket) open with Rameez (a make-shift opener who shown promise in the middle-order) and the pair delivered
For the Perth Challenge Cup, Imran made Qasim Umar open the batting because of his relative ease when facing fast bowling and indeed his courage - in the 1983-84 series against Australia, when Geoff Lawson, Dennis Lillee, Carl Rackemann and Rodney Hogg were terrorising the likes of Zaheer Abbas, Qasim would calmly drop his hands and receive bouncers on his chest and became the most popular cricketer in the Pakistani squad after Imran Khan.
Qasim performed admirably without playing much flamboyant cricket in those four matches. He created this impression of being a basher because of 67 against Australia which was a very well-planned innings actually but was notable for the four successive fours that he hit off Bruce Reid.
Was he the original pinch-hitter? I do not think so. Before him, you had Krish Srikkant of India, Ian Botham of England and even Jeff Dujon opening for Sri Lanka. As I wrote earlier, he was promoted by Imran because he had a valid reason to do so, not just for pinch-hitting.
While Pakistanis were in Australia, the cricket board announced the team for the Indian Tour in 1987 without taking Imran into confidence following which he announced that he won't captain the team. Qasim Umar was not part of the squad. It is unlikely though that Imran would have included him given his poor record against spin bowling. However, before Imran's issues with the board could be sorted out, he reacted by making childish accusations against the Pakistani team (Imran in particular) of drug trafficking.
the Pakistani team was searched with sniffer dogs when they landed in England.
In 1993, he gave a few interviews to the media, conceding his mistakes and even suggesting that if were to be able to produce even 50% of his fitness, he would make himself available for Pakistan again, but of course that never happened.
He periodically kept showing up particularly when it came to discussing match-fixing and even made some claims but I guess nobody took them seriously. Apart from Rafi Nasim (who as far as I recall, wrote his Cricinfo profile) of course, an army officer, who got into BCCP high-ups in the mid-1980s and was only known for his anti-Imran stances.
How good was he? I think had he stayed sane, we would have seen him play a very important role in three important series later on - the 1987 series in England, the 1988 series in the West Indies and the 1990 series in Australia. And he might even have played for Pakistan in the 1992 World Cup. However, belonging to the notice-me school of thought may work for tabloids, not for serious cricketers.