Pakistan’s explosive Test series victory against England in 1992 came with a talismanic performance from Wasim Akram. He was promptly named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
Wasim Akram’s Test career continued until 2002, by which time he had taken 414 wickets at 23.62 from 104 matches. In ODIs, he took 502 wickets at 23.52 in 356 games. He also scored three Test hundreds.
Whatever the controversy surrounding their methods – and this is detailed elsewhere in Wisden – there is no question that in 1992 Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis were the most successful cricketers in the world. Opening the bowling for Pakistan, they had a variety and aggression that made them as potent a pair as the game has seen.
In the Test series in England, Wasim took 21 wickets in four Tests. In the other tour matches he was even more devastating and finished with 82 first-class wickets in all at 16.21 each. He had already made his name as a batsman of sometimes astonishing power. In January 1993 he was suddenly appointed to succeed Javed Miandad as Pakistan’s captain, with Waqar as his deputy. Few cricketers were so obviously destined for the game’s aristocracy, but his elevation came even sooner than his admirers had expected. As captain he will be recognised more clearly and more widely as head of state than whichever general or politician holds the nominal office in Islamabad.
None of this was obvious in his boyhood. Wasim Akram was born in Lahore on June 3, 1966, to a moderately affluent middle-class family, in which his father was mostly concerned with his son’s happiness rather than his success. His mother was the more ambitious for him, but her thoughts hardly embraced professional sport.
Meanwhile, his reputation as a Test cricketer was growing all the time. At Adelaide in 1989/90, he had a partnership with Imran Khan that saved Pakistan from what looked like imminent defeat and took them to the edge of victory. Wasim’s driving to the long, straight boundary of the Adelaide Oval was as powerful as anything ever seen on the ground. Imran was the junior partner. For some time Imran had been saying that Wasim was the world’s greatest all-rounder. Here was the evidence.
After 1992, it is possible to say more than that. He stands at the moment as perhaps the fastest and most destructive left-arm bowler the world has seen.
