Can you name the last Pakistani bowler and give me the year he last played?
Also forget 300, who was the last Pakistani bowler (spin or fast) to take at least 200 wickets?
Fyi: I can think of allrounder Yasir Shah. Who else?
You’re being quite disingenuous and pretending Amir and Asif neither existed nor did anything disrupt their careers. Wasim and Waqar if they got banned in 1991 Pakistan’s 90s bowling attack would have been horrible too.
Similarly, remove Rohit and Kohli and suddenly Indian batting is a lot more susceptible today and it will take time to recover.
Now no doubt our bowling stocks in this last decade have been very shallow between trundlers like Mohammad Irfan, Imran Khan, and Sohail Khan. Perhaps the most talented was Junaid who was merely okay and Wahab good but erratic. So bad were Pakistan’s bowling stocks that an unfit Amir who hadn’t bowled in 5 years and was essentially a completely new bowler, he walked straight into the team. Then you have Hasan Ali who no one ever claimed was anything but a good bowler with a great purple patch.
But now in the last 2 years we have seen the emergence of some genuinely “good” bowlers who all bowl at 145-150, are all young (around 20-25 years) and show good control over the ball with swing, seam, slower ones, and yorkers. I am specifically referring to Shaheen Afridi, Naseem Shah, Mohammad Hasnain, Haris Rauf, and Dilbar Hussain.
Now sure you can make fun of all of them and no doubt I will concede that from all these names, only Shaheen will be the one to take 200 test wickets, with Naseem having an outside chance. The names I mentioned will be rotated in limited overs games for Pakistan, and folks like Rauf and Dilbar will have flash in the pan careers (brilliant flashes). There will only be the one or two that really stick, with the hope being it will be Shaheen and Naseem. But that is precisely the point — fantastic, potential ATG talents come to most countries only once every decade. You lose that chance, you won’t get another. Pakistan was blessed to have Asif and Shoaib at the same time, then Asif and Amir. But you know the story. Our blessing became our curse.
So why rub salt in the wound and pretend India has become some godfather of fast bowling, and ask why Pakistan has not had a Test bowler in the last 15 years with 200 wickets? You know why!
Now, the new decade has begun. It has been 10 years since Asif and Amir, and the universe has begun a new cycle. You ask why Pakistan fans hype up the likes of Shaheen. It is because we know the value of potential. Because we know the pain of it. That we must protect it with our lives, our livelihoods and souls.
You ask why no Pakistani has taken 200 wickets in recent times. Every Pakistani reading your question will close their eyes, shake their head, and grimace a sad smile. It’s a question we know all too well.
)
