Wasim Akram Lauds Legendary Batsmen Whom He Bowled Against, Reserves Special Praise for Kiwi Batsman

Former Pakistan bowler and skipper Wasim Akram named few batting greats that he bowled to and shared his experiences of them. His list of greats included Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, Martin Crowe and few others.

About Sachin he said, "No doubt he is one of the greatest of all time.

"My Indian fans sometimes get frustrated when I give them my reasons (of a different judgment). I played my first Test match against Sachin in 1989 then I played against him in 99. So I didn’t play Test cricket against him for 10 years so it is a bit difficult to judge him as a bowler but as a player he is one of the greats of the game,” Wasim told former Pakistan cricketer Tanveer Ahmed in a YouTube interview.

But he did actually play 24 ODIs against Master Blaster, and managed to dismiss him three times.

While talking about Lara, he said that he had the ability of playing shots out of nowhere.

“Take Brian Lara for instance. He used to score against us with that high backlift. He was a very different batsman. I’ve played a lot against Lara,” said Wasim. In fact Akram dismissed him 9 times in 40 outings.

Moving on to Ponting, Akram mentioned that he did not start off well but then turned out to be a legend.

“I used to get Ricky Ponting out at the start of his career but he, later on, turned out to be one of the greats of the game,” added Akram.

He reserved a special praise for Crowe, who he thought was an excellent player of reverse swing.

“Why I like Marin Crowe is there was a series in which Crowe scored two centuries against us. So I asked him how did play us? He said ‘ played both of you (Wasim and Waqar) on the front foot and for the inswing. The outside automatically used to go past the outside edge. Outswing will trouble you when you go to chase the ball. So that was his simple technique. When played us on the front foot we used to bowl bouncers at him which hampered our lines,” said Akram.