Sami - a failure

I am a great admirer of Imran Khan. His achievements are un paralleled and he has done for the nation some extremely important things by bringing the World Cup to Pakistan in 1992 and then by building a cancer hospital for the under privileged.

A couple of days back I was seeing Imran give an interview and I must say that I hate to dis agree with him on two accounts. His support for Sami seems to escape my logic and his backing for Yunis khan is also extremely shocking. I have already written about Yunis twice in my previous postings, so I will give that subject a little rest and focus mainly on Sami. Mohammad Sami has had a miserable test career and some how he is still very much liked by the great Khan. Imran said that Sami reminds him of Malcolm Marshall. That comparison makes absolutely no sense at all. The later, a world class bowler who terrorized all the greats of his era and the former whose average (47) is close to Inzamam’s batting average are in reality a league apart. Mohammad Sami has pace and may even be able to skid the ball, but I think Inzamam got it all right when he said in a show aired on a Pakistani channel that “Sami does not have the art of taking wickets”. Has Pakistan bowling standards become this low that a person who does not know “where to bowl to a batsman” (another quote from Inzamam) gets repeatedly selected in the side? Malcolm Marshall was able to bag the Man of the series award six times in his career. Please remember that this was during the times of Sir Viv, Holding, Garner and others. Sami has been man of the match only once so far!

Mohammad Sami is a huge failure and in sticking with Sami, Pakistan has once again shown very little application in the area of team selection.

Sami’s Test Career:
Matches: 30
Avg : 47.87

Marshall:
Matches: 81
Avg : 20.94


Pakistan has suffered most by the doings of their own selectors, and Sami is a prime example of such a failure. Will PCB rectify this problem? Will Sami still be in the Pakistani side? Will we see Yunis tossing the coin in the next series? Will Pakistan play regular openers? Has PCB learnt it’s lesson? Like always, we can only pray.