Taufiq was probably the best opening prospect for Pakistan since Saeed, debuted with a ton (albeit against us) & at one point had career average around 50, playing mostly against SAF & AUS. A brilliant slip catcher, who could keep occasionally; besides, he could have been a left-hander in a lineup of 1 to 11 right-handers & hence bunnied by Left-arm spinners or Leggis.
His strength were to be a specialist Test opener - played straight bat, with a decent defense, good judgement out side off, strong front foot drives through V & reasonably comfortable against bounce - every quality to be Pakistan's Test opener for over a decade, hold a key spot in slip cordon. His weakest link was playing spin, & rotating strike - very high % of scorer from boundary - for which, he was even more suited to open in Test.
Now, we are talking of PCB selectors - so, after his heroics against SAF & to an extent Australia in Test, they picked him for ODI & would have definitely picked for T20 as well. No wonder, Taufiq struggled in ODI & no surprise that selectors picked him for ODI based on Test performance & then dropped form Test based on ODI performance. Few years later, he did make a come-back, scored a 235 at Abu Dhabi & a match winning 130 (?) against WI, in WI - but by that time MoHa had better lobby & relation with Misbah, so couple of failures - Taufique was out of the team. I think, he still averages in Test in high 30s.
