Wasim Akram defends Ahmed Shehzad, says fans should refrain from unnecessary criticism

[Abdullah719]

Wasim Akram speaking on TV about Ahmed Shehzad's innings in the 1st inns of the 2nd Test:

"People like ridiculing and criticising players. If this Root, Kohli or de Villiers, people would say 'Oh look, he's playing in each format according to the situation'."

"When a batsman is out of touch, he needs to spend time at the crease and that is what he did."

"People are ridiculing him for playing slowly but if he plays shots and gets out, they would blame him as well. It's impossible to make cricket-lovers happy, what else do you expect from him? He's a bit lost so he wants to cement his place in the side with runs."

"He started off well but then went into his shell. It's not a batting friendly pitch. The ball wasn't coming onto the bat well."

"It was the need of the hour. If I was the captain, I would also tell him to stay at the crease."

"He didn't tell the bowlers to bowl no-balls, it's his luck. A catch was dropped, so what can he do? He tried to take his time after that to settle down."

"It's just unnecessary criticism and negative thoughts and a negative mindset which annoys me. We are scared to praise people. Praise can do wonders and can motivate a person but people are scared of praising. They just want to look at the negative things."

 

[Usman]

Wasim bhai no one is saying Shehzad played a terrible innings - a terrible innings would be getting out for a low score. However, in his defensive mindset, he got a bit lost and missed an opportunity. No one is asking Shehzad to slog or play recklessly. But Shehzad can strike the ball well and so when he gets a bad ball, he should hit it! Had he done that, he could have made more runs and put his team in a stronger position.

Where Shehzad has never improved is getting singles. In both odis and tests he doesn't rotate the strike. That leads to an unnecessarily low strike rate for someone who is a natural strokemaker.

 

[TalentSpotterPk]

Wasim bhai no one is saying Shehzad played a terrible innings - a terrible innings would be getting out for a low score. However, in his defensive mindset, he got a bit lost and missed an opportunity. No one is asking Shehzad to slog or play recklessly. But Shehzad can strike the ball well and so when he gets a bad ball, he should hit it! Had he done that, he could have made more runs and put his team in a stronger position.

Where Shehzad has never improved is getting singles. In both odis and tests he doesn't rotate the strike. That leads to an unnecessarily low strike rate for someone who is a natural strokemaker.

Actually you need to read Waqar Bhai's tweet. Than you will understand that from where Wasim Bhai is actually coming


Love Hate Relation continues

 

[muqarrab]

Shahzad has been out of touch since his debut

 

[shaz619]

Totally agree with Wasim bhai, well said; these arm chair experts are generally clueless and have never played cricket beyond the back garden level.

 

[Big Mac]

"It was the need of the hour. If I was the captain, I would also tell him to stay at the crease."

Oh dear, time to label Wasim a defensive and timid cricketer.

 

[Mamoon]

It is fashionable to go overboard with criticizing Shehzad. He should never have been dropped from the Test team and he is trying hard to occupy the crease after making a comeback after a long time. Let him play a handful of games and then evaluate, especially when he did nothing to get chopped from the Test team. It's a shame that Waqar is still looking to settle past scores and cannot let bygones be bygones.

Shehzad is young and immature, but Waqar is grey-haired veteran. After two flop tenures as coach, it is about time he learns man-management skills.

 

[shaz619]

It is fashionable to go overboard with criticizing Shehzad. He should never have been dropped from the Test team and he is trying hard to occupy the crease after making a comeback after a long time. Let him play a handful of games and then evaluate, especially when he did nothing to get chopped from the Test team. It's a shame that Waqar is still looking to settle past scores and cannot let bygones be bygones.

Shehzad is young and immature, but Waqar is grey-haired veteran. After two flop tenures as coach, it is about time he learns man-management skills.

Shehzad is mentally very tough and he has a big heart, his will power to occupy the crease is a great attribute. You can't teach the warrior spirit, you either have it or you don't; Azhar Ali and Khan are not the most gifted batsman but their toughness has allowed them to flourish. Shehzad will hopefully overcome his technical flaws and he deserves a long rope to elevate his development from within the set up, all I see is moronic individuals make him the subject of great ridicule; in fact they are all the things they claim to hate and more.

 

[from_da_lost_dim3nsion]

Shezad is a good test opener. Just doesn't warrant a place in LOI's

 

[msb314]

It is fashionable to go overboard with criticizing Shehzad. He should never have been dropped from the Test team and he is trying hard to occupy the crease after making a comeback after a long time. Let him play a handful of games and then evaluate, especially when he did nothing to get chopped from the Test team. It's a shame that Waqar is still looking to settle past scores and cannot let bygones be bygones.

Shehzad is young and immature, but Waqar is grey-haired veteran. After two flop tenures as coach, it is about time he learns man-management skills.

Can you elaborate what Waqar said?

 

[Abdullah719]

Can you elaborate what Waqar said?

He criticised the openers on Twitter during the first innings.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Top players always try 2 achieve the Team goal before their own. Openers batted selfishly. Pretty even-steven this Test Match <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WIvPAK?src=hash">#WIvPAK</a></p>— waqar younis (@waqyounis99) <a href="https://twitter.com/waqyounis99/status/859183871405031424">May 1, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[todfod 11]

Shehzad is mentally very tough and he has a big heart, his will power to occupy the crease is a great attribute. You can't teach the warrior spirit, you either have it or you don't; Azhar Ali and Khan are not the most gifted batsman but their toughness has allowed them to flourish. Shehzad will hopefully overcome his technical flaws and he deserves a long rope to elevate his development from within the set up, all I see is moronic individuals make him the subject of great ridicule; in fact they are all the things they claim to hate and more.

No he doesnt need that long run. Sami aslam is a far better player then shezad.. But due to political connection he is stayi g in the team taking a spot from well deserving player..
Shehzad is a nothing cricketer and he should be nowhere the team. He cant even field now days That guy dropped a simple catch of Mohammed Amirs bowling..

 

[GoUgandaCranes]

ahmed shehzad deserves all the criticism and some more actually.

just because waqar said something, wasim had to jump on it and go on a nonsense rant. waqar is absolutely right here and there is no personal vendetta and even if it is there, it is justified.

shehzad adds nothing to this team. nothing actually and makes it lopsided.

he is played in place of hafeez -- and even though i do not like hafeez -- he is 10x the player atm. the windies have like idk 6 left handed batsmen or so and we all know how good he is against. just having him in the team would have meant that instead of giving a debut to shadab who clearly is not ready for test cricket, we could have gone with a hasan ali.

we leaked runs in the first innings because we did not have a third seam bowling option and shadab just is not test class yet.

shehzad as of now is a problem, not a solution. if someone says that he performed well in the domestic circuit, even sami aslam has scored a truckload of runs in the pakistan cup, that too at a better strike rate. the guy is clearly selfish, does not dominate, and is a only one dimensional and that too not good at it.

 

[shariqnoor]

You can debate a lot about Waqar's tenure as coach but one thing that should not be debatable is his honesty and sincerity. He's one of the few blokes in our cricketing structure who actually cares about Pakistan cricket. He left his wife/kids for 7 months of the year every year to coach Pakistan. People might say so what, it's not as if a gun was put to his head to coach Pakistan and that it was his own choosing. That may be right but at least he put up his hand to try and rectify Pakistan cricket. I don't think same could be said about Wasim Akram. He cribs about PCB not approaching him for coaching job. Well when the job of Pakistan head coach was advertised, did Wasim put in his CV? Waqar did and went through the process.

With regards to Waqar's tweet about openers playing selfishly, he didn't just target Shehzad. He mentioned "Openers" which includes Azhar Ali. So it's clear that he isn't lashing Shehzad because of his hatred or that he wants to get back at him. He's just offering his cricketing opinion for which you can agree or disagree. But what you can't do is label an accusation that Waqar is trying to get back at Shehzad. In the era of armchair analysts like Yousuf, Shoaib Akhtar, Sikandar, Wasim, Ramiz, I believe Waqar is a godsend.

 

[Markhor]

I don't understand why its so hard to see the glaring issues with Ahmed Shehzad as a batsman.

The guy has static footwork at the crease, often plays with hard hands outside off-stump and gets easily bogged down at the crease. We could've had a 100+ lead if it wasn't for Shehzad's selfish batting - he was even blocking half volleys and full tosses !

He's lucky he didn't get to tour England, NZ and Australia as he'd have been exposed there. Instead poor Sami Aslam faces three of the hardest tours of his career, doesn't do that badly, yet gets dropped after a couple of failures while Shehzad plundered mediocre attacks in domestic cricket.

 

[waleed88]

That should've been Sami Aslam batting there, improving his average against WI, after playing three horribly difficult tours for a youngster... in which he did admirably well

 

[waleed88]

The opportunist will make hay in this tour and cement his place in the side... The very thought of it makes me hate Inzi so much, and I have tried to defend some of his decisions as a selector but this is clear injustice

 

[waleed88]

Shehzad is mentally very tough and he has a big heart, his will power to occupy the crease is a great attribute. You can't teach the warrior spirit, you either have it or you don't; Azhar Ali and Khan are not the most gifted batsman but their toughness has allowed them to flourish. Shehzad will hopefully overcome his technical flaws and he deserves a long rope to elevate his development from within the set up, all I see is moronic individuals make him the subject of great ridicule; in fact they are all the things they claim to hate and more.

He has a 70 not out, for which he needed 3 chances to bat on...

I saw alot of toughness and will to flourish in that innings

He was near invincible, and the good thing about his innings was invincibility had nothing to do with him, it was WI bowlers and fielders making him look good

 

[moghul]

Its favorite pass time of some people at this forum to find some way to criticize Shahzad.

 

[Arham_PakFan]

Shehzad batted selfishly an was lucky to survive till his score of 70.Fair criticism.

I feel sorry for Sami aslam here,deserved to play.

 

[shaz619]

I don't understand why its so hard to see the glaring issues with Ahmed Shehzad as a batsman.

The guy has static footwork at the crease, often plays with hard hands outside off-stump and gets easily bogged down at the crease. We could've had a 100+ lead if it wasn't for Shehzad's selfish batting - he was even blocking half volleys and full tosses !

He's lucky he didn't get to tour England, NZ and Australia as he'd have been exposed there. Instead poor Sami Aslam faces three of the hardest tours of his career, doesn't do that badly, yet gets dropped after a couple of failures while Shehzad plundered mediocre attacks in domestic cricket.

Firstly, Sami Aslam should be in the squad and was wrongfully dropped. Now that we have got that out the way lets look at Shehzad individually and objectively beyond his personality.

The lack of a 100+ lead should not be attributed to one player alone (anyhow had Sami played a similar knock your criticisms wouldn't be as harsh), cricket is not played by one batsman. And secondly, now that Shehzad has been selected it is only fair that he's given a long rope before being thrown to the wolves given that he's making a comeback.

Azar Ali and Younis Khan never had the greatest of techniques but they came good, in the case of Ali the investment paid off given how we consistently selected him and elevated his development from within the set up; Shehzad does have flaws but he has strengths to which is his ability to occupy the crease and play some decent strokes; it has worked for Misbah who was not meant to survive at the Test level with his abilities as a batsman but mental toughness has been the hallmark of his aura as a batsman.

As for the knock, the wicket wasn't a batting paradise as many would have you believe and regardless of opposition quality you need to respect the conditions and while our run rate has been criticised I suggest you look at the scoring rates of other touring teams. He did go into his shell, but if we look at the situation with a bit of context then we'd see that he's a man who has just returned to the team and we should cut him a bit of slack; not like he's had as long a run as Shafiq who continues to display shocking levels of inconsistency. However, as I said the wicket wasn't the easiest and that partnership with Azhar was key; yes he should have put away the bad balls but like I said he has just returned to Test cricket, you can't seriously expect him to bat like Viv Richards immediately.

Again, Sami Aslam should be in the team ahead of Shehzad and was wrongfully dropped but Shehzad can be a key back up opener moving forward; we complain about lack of talent, glorious technique etc but Misbah's Pakistan have never been the dynamic bunch of the late 90's and as mentioned, the examples given indicate that Shehzad can improve and maximise his strengths despite the limitations. The important thing is to elevate talent and develop them from within the set up, it worked with Azhar and somewhat with Shafiq.

 

[sl-fan-of-pak]

Shehzad could have held the bat like this and flicked his wrist to earn a few boundaries...

 

[saeedhk]

This joker deserves every criticism that comes his way. A mediocre batsman in every format of the game.

 

[Abdullah719]

Firstly, Sami Aslam should be in the squad and was wrongfully dropped. Now that we have got that out the way lets look at Shehzad individually and objectively beyond his personality.

The lack of a 100+ lead should not be attributed to one player alone (anyhow had Sami played a similar knock your criticisms wouldn't be as harsh), cricket is not played by one batsman. And secondly, now that Shehzad has been selected it is only fair that he's given a long rope before being thrown to the wolves given that he's making a comeback.

Azar Ali and Younis Khan never had the greatest of techniques but they came good, in the case of Ali the investment paid off given how we consistently selected him and elevated his development from within the set up; Shehzad does have flaws but he has strengths to which is his ability to occupy the crease and play some decent strokes; it has worked for Misbah who was not meant to survive at the Test level with his abilities as a batsman but mental toughness has been the hallmark of his aura as a batsman.

As for the knock, the wicket wasn't a batting paradise as many would have you believe and regardless of opposition quality you need to respect the conditions and while our run rate has been criticised I suggest you look at the scoring rates of other touring teams. He did go into his shell, but if we look at the situation with a bit of context then we'd see that he's a man who has just returned to the team and we should cut him a bit of slack; not like he's had as long a run as Shafiq who continues to display shocking levels of inconsistency. However, as I said the wicket wasn't the easiest and that partnership with Azhar was key; yes he should have put away the bad balls but like I said he has just returned to Test cricket, you can't seriously expect him to bat like Viv Richards immediately.

Again, Sami Aslam should be in the team ahead of Shehzad and was wrongfully dropped but Shehzad can be a key back up opener moving forward; we complain about lack of talent, glorious technique etc but Misbah's Pakistan have never been the dynamic bunch of the late 90's and as mentioned, the examples given indicate that Shehzad can improve and maximise his strengths despite the limitations. The important thing is to elevate talent and develop them from within the set up, it worked with Azhar and somewhat with Shafiq.

The reason why most people are quite displeased about Shehzad's selection is that a). he hasn't shown any desire to rectify his deficiencies and b). he was missing for most of the QeA trophy, choosing to go and play BPL instead. Why is he selected when there are many openers who performed well in the premier domestic FC tournament? He somehow jumps to the head of the queue with barely any appearances.

I do understand Wasim's point somewhat as we can be a little over-critical of Shehzad - all he can do is to try and get runs somehow and that's what he did. He played as per the team plan.

 

[shaz619]

The reason why most people are quite displeased about Shehzad's selection is that a). he hasn't shown any desire to rectify his deficiencies and b). he was missing for most of the QeA trophy, choosing to go and play BPL instead. Why is he selected when there are many openers who performed well in the premier domestic FC tournament? He somehow jumps to the head of the queue with barely any appearances.

I do understand Wasim's point somewhat as we can be a little over-critical of Shehzad - all he can do is to try and get runs somehow and that's what he did. He played as per the team plan.

Such deficiencies do not disappear overnight and while I appreciate the concern people have towards his alleged lack of effort in fact you're more likely to iron out flaws from within the set up playing at the international level and being exposed to the elite support staff; it's how Azhar Ali who was once dubbed a glorified tailender develop into a world class bat.

And like I said, Sami Aslam should be in the team ahead of him; but Shehzad has been picked now so there's no use discussing hypothetical scenario's or option x or y and judge shehzad objectively on his return