Shoaib Akhtar: “Sami could have easily picked up 400 wickets and be par with the right-arm version of Wasim Akram”

Image courtesy of: Zimbio

Legendary Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar believes that fellow seamer Mohammad Sami had the talent to take 400 wickets and be as good as the legendary Wasim Akram.

Akhtar noted that Sami had a special talent that few bowlers possess, which was the ability to “hit the batsmen’s pads in front of the stumps 99 per cent of the time”.

However, Akhtar admitted that Sami was “under-utilised” since everyone had a big misunderstanding about his bowling action.

“Sami’s aggression with the old ball made him very deceptive and enabled him to hit the batsmen’s pads in front of the stumps 99 per cent of the time,” Akhtar was quoted as saying by Cricket Pakistan. “This was a quality, after Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, Sami had. I, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif did not have that ability.

“Sami could have easily picked up 400 wickets and be par with the right-arm version of Wasim Akram.

“When Sami used to run in fast, it would disrupt his bowling action towards the end and he would concede a lot of runs. But when he used to bowl with a normal action and controlled aggression, his arm and seam would fall at the right place. When he bowled with controlled bowling action in New Zealand, he was unplayable.

“Unfortunately we were not able to understand this during Sami’s bowling days, which meant that he remained under-utilised.”

ALSO CHECK OUT: Which India star admitted he “learnt a lot” from Wasim Akram?

[interaction id=”5dc6e7fe84c507bcfc1855f9″]