Pakistan's pace battery, an embarrassment of riches

Since his comeback from the wilderness, Shoaib Akhtar has not just been a mega star - he's been a match-winner too. Throughout the 2002-03 season time after time, he held a match by the scruff of its neck, and turned it around with a bunch of wickets. If his precision-guided thunderbolts were not shattering stumps, they were crushing toes.

More recently, the pulverised Aussies have a new-found respect for Shoaib. Somewhat humbled, an unusual way to refer to the World Champions, we heard skipper Ricky Ponting talking of him in terms of a 'serious threat'. Ponting said: 'When you're bowling 150 kilometres an hour and swinging the ball you're always going to be hard to play. But we've got to find a way to combat that when the World Cup comes around'.

Ponting has reason to be concerned. He too was scalped with a fast, inswinging delivery recorded at 151.1 kilometres, followed by Darren Lehmann at 150.3 and Michael Bevan at 152.3 in three back-to-back overs of sustained pace by Shoaib that left Australia tottering at 83 for six. The Aussies never recovered from Shoaib's pounding. But will Ponting, with the help of coach John Buchanan, be able to find ways to tackle such scorching pace in the months leading up to the World Cup?

It's anyone's guess, but the Aussie distaste for pace may now out in the open. Before Shoaib, Shane Bond and Makhaya Ntini had earlier this year exposed this particular chink in the armour; they were rewarded with the Aussie ouster in the tri-nation finals, which perhaps may have contributed to Steve Waugh's sacking from captaincy of the one-day side. Yet between then and now, the Aussies could do precious little to counter Shoaib, or they would not have looked, and later sounded as concerned as they did after the Super Challenge series.

The fact is that there never has been an answer to red-hot pace. That is why nobody, even that breed of batsmen deemed comfortable against fast bowling, truly likes super fast stuff.

Anyway, for batsmen, there is further bad news from Pakistan. One has learnt on good authority, as good as the PCB Chairman, Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, that Pakistan is to soon to reintroduce another pace merchant, Mohammad Zahid. One hears that Zahid has not just fully recovered from his many injuries that forced him out of international cricket for the last half of a decade; he is now busy playing for a league in Ireland.

Zahid's pace and fitness, informs Dr Tauseef Razzaq, the head of the PCB appointed doctor's panel which is the final authority for clearing the physical state of every player vying for a spot in the national squad - are now almost as good as at his best.

And at his peak, Zahid was quite a demon. In the 1997 version of the World Series Cup Down Under, he was acknowledged as the fastest in the world. In one over to Brian Lara, Zahid didn't just get the prized wicket off the last delivery, in the bargain he had Lara jumping and fending, beating him with pace and movement in the previous five balls!

Having trained him back to full fitness, Dr Tauseef vouches about Zahid's pace. "He is quite fast, and can bowl long spells at the same pace; he could bowl as fast as Shoaib", says Dr Tauseef. One has to believe Dr Tauseef, for it was he who nursed back Shoaib from a spate of injuries, and having done that gave him a clean bill of health. Few believed in him then, but since Shoaib has silenced all doubters through an extended season, taking Dr Tauseef's word seriously sounds like a good idea.

So with Zahid back in contention, the Pakistani pace artillery looks awesome. In Shoaib, Zahid, Sami, Razzaq, Akram and Waqar (in order of pace), they now just don't have a quartet, they've a sextuplet. This really is embarrassment of riches, if ever there was one. Despite Akram and Waqar being in advanced stages of their careers, this is a pretty potent pace attack - one which could rival the various foursomes that the Caribbeans unleashed on the world between the early '80s and early '90s.

The PCB, more specifically its chairman, is now being acknowledged to have done a good turn to the Pakistan team and to Shoaib, by not leaving him in the lurch when he was in utter bad shape physically, wayward mentally and hounded by the 'chucking allegations'. Though this scribe was one among those who criticised him for frittering away millions on the temperamental speedster's recovery, one now has to concede that it was money well spent. Shoaib has not just tore into batting line-ups, he has silenced his own, and his benefactor's critics.