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Zaheer Khan : The silver lightning in the Indian
Cloud |
A feature article by Karthik
Narayan
 Australia,
England, the West Indies, and even neighbours
Pakistan and Sri Lanka all boasted of their
faster variety of left arm bowlers. Something
unheard of in Indian soil for many years, and
not certainly until Karsan Ghavri led the team
with the new ball attacks. Thickset critics
shooed the Indian new ball attack off, ever
since Srinath and Prasad were on their onward
journey to hit that final shower and hang up
their boots. Many youngsters were tried out,
Harvinder Singh, Debashis Mohanty, Robin Singh
Jr, Thiru Kumaran are the first few names in
that list.
But then, cometh the hour, cometh the occasion,
rises thy Hero, riding with palm desert spring
water sprinkling it like elixir onto the team
captain making him proud to have bred a variety
in vogue. Bowlers always move in transitional
stages all through their life spans. With the
end of Srinath-Prasad era, ushering in a new
ball attack to bowl against the contemporary
greats is a tough task for any captain.
Saurav Ganguly was given that arduous task
sometime ago, a new entrant Zaheer Khan with a
reputation of hitting the deck and producing
pace, bounce and venom was tested out. And all
of India was watching too.
Zaheer Khan made his first best impression in
the ICC Knockout tournament in October 2000 in
Kenya. The same time that Yuvraj Singh singled
out and whipped the Aussie great bowlers to
“fetch” that white ball time and again. After
riding on the crest wave of a fantastic Yuvraj
Singh golden debut, Zaheer Khan pounded the
pitch with his high arm, fastish deliveries on
target on off stump. As the left arc hit the
deck, terror lurked even in the minds of the
best ever in the business – Stone Cold Steve
Waugh! Zaheer Khan proved that Indians were no
lesser in the bowling department and with his
Yorker tore out that evergreen skipper thus
taking India to a famous win.
Now suddenly, India has left arm pacemen coming
from everywhere, the new ball attack boasts of 3
of these rare breed of cricketers – Irfan Pathan
and Ashish Nehra are the other two apart from
King Khan.
He has also proved his mettle with the bat;
hitting huge sixers, clean solid sixers in the
One Dayers. A poor Henry Olonga would be best to
recall those encounters of the nasty kind. A
doer of dastardly deeds has been Zaheer Khan –
when he scored 75 runs coming in at Number 11,
against Bangladesh in 2004-05, he thus became
the highest scorer at No.11. Imagine holding a
terrific batting record like that! So he is
indeed a special Number eleven, the sort that
people would love to have in their team.
Zaheer khan has always been a youngster ready to
take on a challenge, and relished bowling in
tough conditions. Always hitting the deck and
providing the breakthroughs every now and then,
and what more can a skipper ask for?
He has a good build for a fast bowler, runs in
hard and lets the ball go with a rip that would
make any world-class bowler proud. All those
years at the MRF pace academy and the workouts
with some of the best pacemen of all time like
Dennis Lillee has really helped mould this
player into a revelation of sorts.
Injury problems have indeed spoilt the bright
spots of this lad’s career, but he has been
working on his fitness. With comebacks galore,
the career record isn’t the same as you would
expect of this out performer. If he keeps
himself fit and raring to go, his zeal shall
take him amongst the Hall of fame of Indian
bowlers.
With his aggression and with proper nurturing,
this Baroda Bomber is something to watch out in
the Indian ranks. We at Cricketfundas.com wish
this cricketer a injury free and wonderful
career ahead along with troubles for the batsmen
facing this fearsome paceman.
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