South Africa is a tough please to bat. I do not remember in my lifetime any Pakistani test batsman scoring 2 test centuries in a 3 test series in south Africa except Azhar Mehmood who outscored
Inzimam ul Haq,
Saeed Anwar,
Yousuf Yohana,
Ijaz Ahmed &
Amir Sohail
on that difficult tour.
He went on to play fewer tests than all these players why ?
In those years 1997/1998 Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock were at there peak and only 2,3 Australian and Indian international cricketers could score against them in South Africa on those pitches including Sachin of those days.
Donald in that series took wickets at an Ave of 16 and SR of 30 in 3 test series and 3 top wicket takers of that series had SR under 40 and all five averaged under 25.
Azhar Mehmood scored 327 runs at an average of 65 and SR of 63 in those days with only 2 sixes and 43 fours and with 2 hundreds in 3 innings.
His all centuries (3) came against South Africa having Pollock ans Donald who seemed to eat our batsman except for Saeed Anwar.
Why did we give him only 34 test innings as a batsman ? When our test batting record in swinging seaming and bouncy conditions hasn't been good ever including our greats.
I remember Azhar was a thorough gentleman and he did not have discipline or attitude issues ever in domestic or international cricket.
Yes he wasn't very good against Spin but just 34 test innings with hardly 1 comeback after getting dropped whereas faisal Iqbal, shoaib Malik,Imran Farhat, Toufeeq Umar as Yasir hameed have made between 5 to 10 comebacks in their career and none of them performed at Azhars level against top pace bowlers of SA in their peaks. Donald and Pollock. Mind you Kallis and Kluseber were deadly on those years aswell. Both were fast , accurate and wicket takers.
In those years we did not struggle against spin much. But against people like brendon Nash, Simon doul, harmison, Gough, Hoggard, Pollock, Donald, Kallis, Gillespie, McGrath, Fleming, Vaas majority of our batsman struggled immensely resulting in us top being a top 3 team despite having Wasim , Waqar, Shoaib, Saqlain and Mushtaq in our ranks.
The bat he is using in the picture is a H4L bat, I went o the factory with him in 2011/12 when he was with Auckland Aces, he picked up 5 , they are beautiful bats, I actually wrote an article on the FT website about the visit. Aju bhai, now uses Might Willow.