Shoaib in a hurry to impress (19 June 1999)
The only thing faster than Shoaib Akhtar's bowling is his lifestyle
19-Jun-1999
19 June 1999
Shoaib in a hurry to impress
Simon Hughes
The only thing faster than Shoaib Akhtar's bowling is his lifestyle.
"Anyone seen Shoaib this morning?" I inquired at the Pakistan team
hotel on Thursday. "Yes, I did," said a friend. "At about 2am on the
dance floor."
Obviously, rest and relaxation are not top of his list of daily
priorities. He can sniff out a party at a thousand metres and
strutted his stuff in white suit and pink shirt at a Birmingham
nightclub recently, conveying more than a hint of John Travolta. His
cricketing prowess and film-star looks have had girls from Leeds to
London throwing themselves at him.
"Marry me, Shoaib, please, take me," a posse of Asian girls begged
him below the balcony at the Oval last week. There are frequent
suggestions that he does not offer much resistance. He is quickly
becoming the Eddie Irvine of international cricket. As unrestrained
off the track as he is on it.
As soon as you meet him, it's obvious why he's so popular. He's warm
and friendly, with a megawatt smile and a twinkle in his eye. He
flirted with a pretty Turkish waitress as we sat down to breakfast,
calling her darling, and chivalrously offering to help with her
chores. He urged her to watch tomorrow's final. "I'll bowl them out,
I will," he promised without pretence, not knowing at that stage who
the opponents would be. There is a refreshing lack of inhibition
about everything he does and says. He is the kind of dashing showman
that sport's general culture of relentlessness badly needs.
"People say I'm arrogant on the field," he said. "I have to be
arrogant otherwise I'm not aggressive, and that's where my pace comes
from. I'm playing for my country. It's my job to be arrogant and
aggressive. I want to entertain, too. But once I'm away from the
game, I like to be sociable and make friends.'
This he took to its ultimate extreme in Northern Ireland last summer.
Paid £7,500 to play a season for Strabane, near Londonderry, he took
few wickets but won numerous admirers, some of whom came to the
semi-final on Wednesday.
"They're fantastic people," Shoaib said. "And it was wonderful over
there. They really know how to have a good time. I hardly slept for
six months. I'm going back there to relax for a few weeks straight
after the final."
The Emerald Isle has had such an influence, in fact, his slightly
gabbled Asian diction is now laced with Irish vowels.
The green, forested hills of County Tyrone are quite a contrast from
Shoaib's roots among the hustle and bustle of stifling, dusty
Rawalpindi. The fourth son of an oil refinery supervisor, he was a
jobless teenager in the mid-1990s whose only cricket experience was
gleaned from watching TV and playing on concrete with a taped-up
tennis ball. Wherever you go in Pakistan, you see playgrounds full of
boys tearing into bowl, shirt-tails flapping, in the image of Wasim
and Waqar.
Shoaib was just another until, according to him, in late 1996 he was
spotted by the president of the Rawalpindi Cricket Association, and
invited to play in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, their first-class
cricket. He took 69 wickets in his first season and also blitzed
seven of the New Zealand tourists in a practice game. "That was when
I first realised I was quick," he said.
He toured England with the Pakistan A team the following year. His
first over on tour, at Trent Bridge, was wild - containing four
no-balls and costing 17 runs - and so was some of his behaviour.
Perpetual late nights and unpunctuality gave him, despite several
devastating spells, a poor tour report which, when properly
scrutinised by the national selectors, caused him to be dropped from
a Pakistan one-day international squad he had just been picked for.
He eventually made his Test debut at the end of 1997 against the West
Indies and fully redeemed himself with tremendous bowling in South
Africa in early 1998. A 96mph delivery was clocked during his five
for 43 in Durban, the fastest recorded in the modern era, though the
successive yorkers that cleaned up Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar
(first ball) in front of 90,000 Indians in Calcutta four months ago,
cannot have been far behind. Suddenly he was being dubbed the
Rawalpindi Express, though as this ramshackle vehicle from Lahore
potters along at barely 30mph, the analogy is largely inappropriate.
Pounding in off his 22-pace run, his mop of hair flapping, cheeks
quivering, he makes a fabulous sight - except to the batsman. "You
know," he said, "I watch myself on TV and I don't believe it. I never
thought I looked like that." Now he has allied extreme pace to
remarkable control. As Imran Khan has said: "It's incredible how
someone can bowl so fast and still be so accurate."
Imran regularly pops into the dressing-room and passes on tips,
notably one to reduce his run-up slightly, and Wasim is always on
hand for advice at mid-off, but there's no doubt Waqar Younis has had
the most powerful influence. There is an uncanny resemblance in
run-up and action, and Shoaib's "gather" - the last-second
contraction of the body that is the source of his pace - and
delivery, are pure Waqar.
"I really idolise him," Shoaib says. "I love the way he runs, the way
he bowls, the way he talks. I always respect him. He's helped me a
lot.
"And now," he adds with a mischievious grin, "I'm going to beat him."
He wants to play a season or two of county cricket, like Waqar did,
and also wears the boots Waqar uses - hand-made, and costing £400 a
pair, from Mason's in Sutton Coldfield. And deliveries like the
searing yorker that uprooted Stephen Fleming's leg-stump on Wednesday
bear a legacy of Waqar; the pace, the late reverse swing, the
hopelessness of the batsman's plight. In late 1990s parlance, Fleming
was well and truly 'Shoaib-ed'.
He remembers watching the 1992 World Cup final on TV. "Wasim was
bowling really fast and I was thinking, 'God he's so quick.' Then I
listened to Imran's winning speech, holding the cup in the twilight
of his career, and I thought 'He's so handsome' and I also thought I
would love to be a little part of that next time, help to do it the
way they did it."
Aside from the odd bout of ill-discipline - he missed the team coach
from Nottingham to Manchester this week and had to be driven up by
the assistant manager - he is less rebellious and works out in the
swimming pool and the gym. The aims are both professional and ever so
slightly narcissistic. He has bowled the fastest ball in this World
Cup - 95mph against South Africa - and even his slower ball homes in
at 73. But he thinks a 100mph delivery isn't possible tomorrow.
"There's so much pressure on us and I'm so tired right now. We've
been playing non-stop for six months."
Just imagine what he could do if he had a good night's sleep.
Source :: The Electronic Telegraph