Like a falcon he flew to the bowling end, leaped, slinging action and zap. Silence fell onto a capacity crowd as batting wickets danced all over and Sachin walked back to the batsmen club informing them of reniance of pure pace bowling. Shoaib Akhtar the phenomenon announced his arrival onto the big stage. Dravid confirmed Sachins assertion the same innings and since then he has rattled batsmen all over.
Akhtar's talent came out of the shadows of Wasim and Waqar but unfortunately could not surpass them. He had all the talent but when history of Pakistan bowling will be recorded he would not surpass them. Akhtar body structure and extra long run up- pleasure to watch but extra hard on body led to many injuries. Flambounce was the tag word associated with pacers of that era and that often took better of Shoaib. His professionalism was doubted and frequent breakdown on field led to captains having low confidence in him and then eventually to be dropped. Then ever incompetent elememts in Pakistan Cricket Board did the biggest indiscipline by leaking some health issues of Shoaib and if it was any other country they would have been sued big time. We all thought story of Akhtar is over.
No !!!... he rocked back, hard as ever and took his ailing body for yet another go at the highest level. He bamboozeld domestic scene, took a leave from test cricket and concentrated on shorter format. Then came the disgrace of spot fixing and opening in the pace section of our team. Akhtar grabbed it with open arms. While on tour he helped train other pacers and himself bowled neat spells and led the attack with younger Gull. He entered WC with aim of hanging his boats the last time. Bowled like a champion campaigner to peg back SL. As had been the case with his carreer others let him down as much as himself. Akmal dropped sitters when he had NZ on the ropes. Taylor took him for runs and he picked up a niggle. This proved the last niggle he had to endure and the wounded tigger decided to call it a day after WC. Pakistan team moved on and looked at the future. Akhtar had played his last game.
In all Shoaib "The Rawalpindi Express" gave this cricket crazy country many moments to cherish upon and we thank him for that. The mere spectical of his flowing run up will be remembered for ages. Hopefully another Rawalpindi Express can take over soon as we can ill afford this Express pace to desert Pakistan camp.
Thankyou Shoaib and best of luck.
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