67: Inzamam-ul-Haq

120 matches. 8830 runs @ 49.6. 25 hundreds. Highest score: 329

16 years. 2x good. 4x excellent. 3x outstanding.

The discussion

Yes! 

No!!!!

Sorry . . .

&*#$!

Words no batter wants to hear. Run outs are an unnecessary form of dismissal in cricket, in Test cricket triply so. Quadruply so. Eleventy so. You get my point. You shouldn’t get run out in long-form cricket. No one should be run out in a Test. Sadly, Inzamam-ul-Haq heard those dreaded words way too often in his otherwise stellar Test career.

Now, please don’t get me wrong here, Inzamam was a tremendous player. Don’t take my word for it, ask fellow Pakistan great Imran Khan who rated Inzamam as the best player in the world against pace bowling at one point in his career.

I sometimes wonder how Inzamam would have fared if his career came 20 years earlier, or 20 years later? I feel reasonably confident that in the 1970s Inzamam would have been equally dominant, if not more so. His aggressive hitting and strokeplay would translate well, and his fitness (or perhaps if I’m being a little harsh, lack of perceived fitness) would not have been an issue in that era. One does get the feeling that the demands of athleticism in the field might be an issue for Inzamam in 2021. I’m almost certain he’d be physically fitter, leaner even, but would he have transformed into an athletic fielder? With high demand on multi-dimensional cricketers, particularly in white-ball cricket, in the modern era, I wonder if development pathways are ignoring players like Inzamam.[1]

But enough crystal-ball gazing, while Inzamam was playing, what strokeplay! When watching him bat I was reminded again of the 1970s in two different respects. In one way, I was reminded of the Adam West Batman live-action series. Inzamam would shuffle across his crease a little, then Wham! Pow! Bam! The ferocity of the ball-striking was almost comical. I did at one point wonder if someone had ever remixed Inzamam’s brutal shot-making with comic exclamations like those cartoons. Then, a late cut would feature in the highlights reel, and I was reminded that Inzamam could mix the power of a heavyweight boxer with the deft touch and precision striking of a fencer.

Statistically, the case for Inzamam is very clear. For just about the first time in ‘The Club’, we have a player who has almost all his statistical categories inside the top-40. Even his AARP is 32nd, which is still excellent in an era where there were a number of elite batters driving up the comparison average.

But checking the record in more detail seems to muddy the waters. Inzamam was great against some quality opposition (England and India) and not so against South Africa and Australia. Even despite a steep drop-off in those two countries, his away average is still a healthy 45.91, and he has more away centuries (13) than he does at home (11). Statistical contradictions abound feature in his record.

In my original notes, I wrote ‘check how many captains he played for’. I thought it would be high, seven or eight maybe. Excluding a one-off Test for the ICC World XI, Inzamam played under no less than ten (10!) different captains, plus he captained the side himself for a full 31 Tests. It actually says something very positive about his leadership that he managed to last 31 Tests in the volatile environment that is Pakistan cricket. Only Wasim Akram captained the side for more than 20 Tests during Inzamam’s career. Cap that off with a few shining moments, perhaps none better for a Pakistan player than a big-daddy hundred (184) in your 100th Test, and a victory against arch-rival India to boot.

The verdict

Despite all my research and analysis, Inzamam remains an enigma to me. On one hand, he dominated against England and India, and in India to boot. Yet against Australia and South Africa, he really struggled. Chalk this one up to bouncy wickets and reasonable pace attacks during that era, perhaps, but then we have Imran’s comments referenced earlier about Inzamam being one of the best in the business against fast bowling. His record suggests one thing, but a fellow great  has a completely different point of view. What am I to make of all this?

I keep coming back to: ’how good could Inzamam-ul-Haq have been if he didn’t run himself out quite so often?’ Given that he averaged 50, the sky is almost the limit really! Overall, against the toughest Test opposition in his era, Inzamam didn’t have the greatest record. So, as good as his overall legacy was, his final ranking takes a little hit.

I still don’t know what to make of him.

In one word

Enigma

Notes

[1] Rahkeem Cornwall is a wonderful, magnificent example of plus-sized athletes being able to still play Test cricket. Part of me still thinks that junior pathways are not designed to nurture such an athlete in other countries; being big doesn’t necessarily mean lazy or unfit. Sometimes I think that pathway programmes have such a specific view of the desired attributes in promising cricketers that genetics is sometimes confused with laziness, or unwillingness to work hard, and promising cricketers are left by the wayside.

Bio

Record

Source: ESPN CricInfo

career peak

Sources: ESPN CricInfo, ESPN CricInfo