Brad Hogg: “It’s very hard to find players that can come in and find boundaries from ball one. But that was his job for the Pakistan team and it came off most of the time”
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Former Australia spinner Brad Hogg said Pakistan power-hitter Asif Ali is one of the few batsmen in the world that can hit boundaries from ball one.
Asif scored 57 runs in six matches in the recent T20 World Cup at an average of 57 and a strike-rate of 237.50.
His most notable performance came against Afghanistan, where he won Pakistan the match with some late heroics.
Asif hammered an unbeaten 25 off seven balls, which included four sixes.
All the sixes he hit came in the 19th over off the bowling of Karim Janat, where he finished off the game and led Pakistan to an impressive five-wicket win.
He also did well in the five-wicket win over New Zealand, where he struck 27 off 12 balls, which included a boundary and three sixes.
“It’s very hard to find players that can come in and find boundaries from ball one. But that was his job for the Pakistan team and it came off most of the time,” Hogg said on his YouTube channel as quoted by Cricket Pakistan.
Despite some strong performances in the T20 World Cup, Asif didn’t feature in any of the games during the three-match T20 series against Bangladesh.
Pakistan beat Bangladesh by eight wickets in the first Test and will now be looking to win the series 2-0 in the second Test, which begins on Saturday in Dhaka.
Pakistan squad for Bangladesh Test series: Babar Azam (c), Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Abdullah Shafique, Abid Ali, Azhar Ali, Bilal Asif, Faheem Ashraf, Fawad Alam, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Kamran Ghulam, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Nauman Ali, Sajid Khan, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wicketkeeper), Saud Shakeel, Shaheen Afridi, Zahid Mahmood