Take a trip to Southampton this summer and you will witness an old master’s final, vivid brushstrokes. There will be no Shane Warne, sadly, but another giant stands in his place and you will never see his like again.
Wasim Akram, 37 in June, who first played county cricket for Lancashire 15 years ago, says he will retire from all cricket at the end of the year and he has chosen Hampshire’s Rose Bowl for his valediction. It should not be missed.
His run-up, short and bustling, is hardly a thing of beauty. Once he has arrived at the crease, however, Wasim is a thing of wonder. Suddenly he is not so much a bowler as an incendiary device.
His delivery is an explosion of limbs, a flurry of menace. He is tall and wide-shouldered. But the devil in his bowling comes from his cocked wrist and his furiously fast arm action. He can swing the ball, in and away, from over and round the wicket.
He has lost a bit of pace but can still top 130kph. And that rapid arm makes him so difficult to pick up that the batsman can resemble some amateur astrologist, scanning skies for a rumoured comet.
He can bowl yorkers at will and his bouncer can still brush the nostrils of the well-set. He is a magnificent ‘death†bowler and skilled disposer of rabbits.
He is, simply, the finest left-armer there has been, better even than those Sixties swingers Alan Davidson and Garry Sobers. Imran Khan promised a phenomenon 20 years ago and the promise has been kept in the man from Lahore.
He is the only bowler to have taken 500 one-day international wickets — he also has 414 from his 104 Tests — and he can make the best batting line-up appear as brittle as Melba toast.
Wasim looks fit and lithe even though the lines on his face suggest a fifth-day pitch where the cracks have widened and deepened.
Remarkably, though, for a world-class strike bowler of almost 20 years, the enthusiasm of this proud cricketer remains intact. ‘I’m not concentrating on reversing the ball like I was 10 years ago,†he says. ‘Now it’s easier to bowl with the new ball than the old.
‘I can’t bowl 35 overs in a day now. Maybe it will be 15 to 20 to start with. But once I get my rhythm back I can bowl 25 to 30. I still love the game, love fielding, love throwing, love batting. And I love the control when I’m bowling. And, if the team is doing well, that motivates me. And this 20-over cricket sounds good. Whoosh, whoosh. Two hours and it all happens.â€
Wasim, who cannot remember when he last played in whites, reached his high tide in 1992, when he bowled superbly in the World Cup final before taking 21 wickets in four Tests in England.
But even in his pomp and playing for Lancashire, for whom he last appeared against Hampshire in 1998, Wasim’s game was never best suited to county cricket’s diurnal rhythms. Rather, this is a cricketer who can win matches in short passages of inspired play.
And the recent World Cup, his fifth, would suggest that ability is still there. He was magnificent against Namibia and his final over against England was a condensed master class.
‘But there is an end to everything. I’ve got to finish my cricket and I want to finish in September, hopefully on a high note.â€
Pakistan cricketers, though, can be fickle, and when asked whether he would consider a Pakistan comeback, he replied: ‘Never say never.â€
He was offered the Hampshire captaincy, like others, before the job was given to John Crawley. ‘That wouldn’t have been fair, on me or the players. I don’t know them well enough. I played with John at Lancashire and he’s a good choice. But I’ll be telling him lots of things, on and off the field.â€
Hampshire, who should be able to indulge in some rotation this summer with a powerful seam battery, are also hoping Wasim will take some of the younger bowlers under his wide wing. ‘Yes, I will chat to them. And not off the field but on it, while we are playing. I will ask them what they are trying to do. Just like Imran helped me.â€
Then he wants to return to Pakistan, to commentate and rehabilitate his reputation. Three years ago the Pakistan air was thick with allegations of match-fixing. Wasim was fined, along with a number of other players, after the judge found the evidence was not strong enough to warrant greater punishment. But the judge concluded he should never captain Pakistan again. He has not.
Wasim will not discuss this sensitive issue, though he does say his diabetes was brought on by the intense pressure of recent years.
Down at the Rose Bowl, though, the pressure feels less extreme. And all the excited chatter is of watching one of the greatest cricketers take a final bow. —