WaSiM AkRaM

Wasim Akram Chaudhry
COUNTRY: باكستان (pakistan )

BORN : 3 June 1966 (age 45)

Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

Nickname Sultan of Swing, The Two W's (with Waqar Younis), King Of Swing  كينج أف سوينغ

STYLE:
BATTING STYLE: Left Handed bat
BOWLING STYLE: Left arm fast
ROLE  :All-rounder (bowler and batsman  )
DEBUT:Against New Zealand, 2nd ODI, Wills Series 1984/85
Iqbal Stadium, Faisalabad, Pakistan


          " The best cricketer born in the International cricket world history ".
He is the founder of swing, swing not of 1 type but 12 types,an amazing captain, and
he is also a great  Hero not only  for Pakistan but for all countries.
He is an  Punjabi in lahore(URUDU: وسیم اکرم); born on 3 June 1966.
He is a former Pakistani left arm fast bowler and left-handed batsman in cricketer and model.
who represented the Pakistan national cricket team in Test cricket and One Day International (ODI) matches.
Akram started his ODI career against New Zealand in Pakistan in 1984 under the Captaincy of Zaheer Abaass.


He rose to prominence taking 5 wickets in his just 3rd ODI against an awesome Australian side in 1985 Benson & Hedges World Championship who would be future winners of 1987 World Cup.
His wickets included that of Kepler Wessels, Dean Jones and Captain Border.
He was the first bowler to reach the 500-wicket landmark in ODI cricket during the 2003 World Cup.
 In 2002 Wisden released its only and final list of best players of all time.
Wasim was ranked as the best bowler in ODI of all time with a rating of 1223.5.
Ahead of Allan Donald, Imran Khan, Waqar Younis, Joel Garner, Glen McGratt and Murali
Akram was one of five new members inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
During his professional career he bowled with genuine speed and hostility.
 Akram was a man possessed of accurate control of line and length, accompanied by seam and swing bowling skills, extended to both inswingers and outswingers.
 With a very quick bowling action, he could bowl equally well from both sides of the wicket.
His mastery of reverse swing with the cricket ball meant he was at his most dangerous towards a bowling innings, and earned him the nickname of one of the "Sultans of Swing", the other one being Waqar Younis
He finished with 22 Man-of-the-Match awards in ODIs.
In fact, Akram and Shaun Pollock (who also has 22) have the highest number of awards among players whose major suit isn't batting.

Wasim and Waqar, known as "  The two Ws"  of the Pakistani team, were one of the most successful bowling partnerships in cricket.

PERSONAL LIFE:

      Akram was born in Lahore, Pakistan on 3 June 1966, to a moderately affluent middle-class family.
 He was educated at Islamia College in Lahore, where he played as an opening bowler and batsman.
Like several other Pakistani cricketers during the 1980s, his inclusion into the national side was at the behest of a senior player in the team, which in Akram's case, was Javed Miandad.
Akram was diagnosed with diabetes at the peak of his career but despite the initial psychological blow.
He managed to regain his form and went on to produce fine cricketing performances. Since then he has actively sought to be involved in various awareness-raising campaigns for diabetes.
He was married to Huma in 1995. They had two sons Taimur and Akbar  from their marriage of fifteen years. Huma died of multiple organ failure at Apollo Hospital in Chennai, India on 25 October 2009.

FIRST CLASS CARRER:

   In 1988 he signed for Lancashire County Cricket Club in England and went on to become their most   successful overseas players. From 1988 to 1998, he opened their bowling attack in their ECB Trophy, Benson &   Hedges Cup and National League tournaments.In 1998, with Akram as captain, Lancashire won the ECB   Trophy and Axa League and finished second in the championship tournament despite losing only five matches in all competitions throughout the season. Apart from the National League second division title in 2003, this was the last time Lancashire won a troph

ODICARRER:

    Out of 356 ODI matches he played Pakistan won 199 of them and 66 under his captaincy(He captained  Pakistan in ODIs in 109 matches and has one of the best win ratio as a captain).
 In 199 win matches he took 326 wickets at fantastic 18.86 apiece with a run rate of 3.70 and took 18 4-wicket  hauls











TEST CARRER:

 Akram made his Test cricket debut for Pakistan against New Zealand in 1985 and in only his second Test  match, he claimed 10 wickets. A few weeks prior to his selection into the Pakistan team.
 In the 1987 Cricket World Cup, when Pakistan played against the West Indies, Akram bowled to Viv Richards in  the late overs of the innings but Richards,
 who is regarded as the best batsman during that period, struggled against Akram's bowling performances.
 Akram's rise in international cricket was rapid during the late 1980s. When Pakistan toured the West Indies in  1988, he looked to be the fastest bowler between the two sides. However, a groin injury impeded his career in the  late 1980s. Following two surgeries, he re-emerged in the 1990s as a fast bowler who focused more on swing and  accurate bowling.

ALLROUNDER:

 Akram was also skilled with the bat and was regarded as a bowling all-rounder. He was especially effective against spin bowlers. However, he liked to slog and was criticised for his lack of high scores and giving away his wicket too cheaply for a player of his talent. He did silence his critics and the media in October 1996 when he scored 257 runs not out, of the team's total of 553 against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura. He also achieved good scores for the Pakistan team such as his scores of 123 and 45* against Australia to take Pakistan to victory in a low scoring match. His batting was also valuable to the Pakistan ODI side, such as his match winning performance in the Nehru Cup, when needing six runs and two balls to win the match; he hit the first delivery he faced for six runs and secured the cup.

He was a favourite of the local British fans who used to sing a song called "  Wasim for England"   at Lancashire's matches.




A TOUGH PERIOD WITH SOME JOYS (Jan 1998 till 2003 world cup):

 In 1999, he led Pakistan to the brink of victory in the World Cup before they capitulated and was defeated by  Australia in the final, by eight wickets with almost 30 overs to spare. This was the start of the match fixing  controversies, as critics believed Akram had set up the match for Australia. However, none of the allegations  could be proved.
 He was Pakistan's best bowler in the 2003 Cricket World Cup taking 19 wickets in 6 matches. However,  Pakistan failed to reach the "Super Six" phase of the tournament and Akram was one of the eight players to be
 sacked by the Pakistan Cricket Board as a result.


CAPTIANCY:


Wasim Akram captained Pakistan in 109 ODI matches out of 356 he played. Pakistan won 66 matches of them. So he has a win loss ratio of 1.60 which more than Imran's1.27 , Waqar's 1.60. [13].Under his captaincy Pakistan played.He also captained Pakistan with some success. The high points of his captaincy was the 1996–1997 victory in the World Series Cricket in Australia, two Test match wins in India in 1998–1999 and in 1999, when Pakistan reached the 1999 Cricket World Cup final. The low point was the 1996 Cricket World Cup in Pakistan and India, when he had to pull out of the quarter final match against India, citing injury. After Pakistan's defeat, there were angry protests outside his home and riots across the country from angry fans who accused the team of throwing the match and a government inquiry was launched into the failure.

RETIREMENT:
On 18 May 2003, at the age of 36, Akram abruptly announced his retirement from international cricket, ending a career which spanned 19 years. He had suggested that he was ready to quit several times towards the end of his career, but Pakistan's sub-par performance in the World Cup proved to be the deciding factor.
Prior to his retirement, he was one of eight senior players dropped for the Sharjah Cup in April 2003, and was then omitted from the Pakistan squad for the subsequent Bank Alfalah Cup triangular series.[14] Due to his omission from the team, he did not participate in a farewell match.
Akram fulfilled his contract play for Hampshire until the end of the English season.

AFTER RETIREMENT:

MEDIA CARRER:

Since retiring from cricket, Akram has worked and taken up commentary for television networks and can currently be seen as a sports commentator for ESPN Star Sports and ARY Digital among others. He did commentary on a variety of sporting tournaments including the 2009 Women's Cricket World Cup in Australia, the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 in England, the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa, and the 2011 ICC World Cup in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

COACHING CARRER:

In 2010, Akram was appointed the bowling coach consultant of Kolkata Knight Riders, the Indian Premier League team for Kolkata. Sourav Ganguly was always keen to have Akram as the bowling coach for India, during the former's stint as Indian captain. Although this never happened, his dreams were realised to some extent, when Akram was appointed as the bowling coach for the franchise.While working for the Kolkata Knight Riders, he was also responsible for the signing of Pakistani domestic left-arm fast-bowler Mohammad Irfan. Akram has also been coaching in Pakistan fast bowling camps.His most notable discovery being the teenage Pakistani bowler Muhammad amir.

CRICKET CONTROVERSIES:

In 1992, after he had been successful against the English batsmen, accusations of ball tampering began to appear in the English media, though no video evidence of foul play was ever found. Akram and Younis had been able to obtain prodigious amounts of movement from both new and old cricket balls. The skill of the reverse swing delivery was relatively unknown in England and around the cricketing world during that period.


“            His commission feels that all is not well here and that Wasim Akram is not above board.
            He has not co-operated with this Commission. It is only by giving Wasim Akram the  benefit
          of the doubt after Ata-ur-Rehman changed his testimony in suspicious circumstances that he
        has not been found guilty of match-fixing. He cannot be said to be above suspicion.      ”
                                                                              — Malik Mohammad Qayyum



AWARDS AND  RECORDS:
---Akram was awarded "   Wisden Cricketer "   of the Year in 1993 for his sporting achievements. He was awarded Lux Style Award for Most Stylish Sports Person in 2003.
---Akram is the only bowler in cricket to have achieved four hat-tricks in international cricket, two each in Tests matches and One Day Internationals. he was the third of only three bowlers to have taken two Test cricket hat-tricks, the others being Hugh Trumble and Jimmy Matthews.
                                             HATRICK VS AUSTRALIA in 1990

                                       

---Akram has also achieved the highest score by a number eight batsman in Test cricket when he scored 257 runs not out from 363 balls against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura. The innings contained 12 sixes which is also a world record for Test cricket and scored the record runs in one day international hundread .His highest score was 86 runs
---He also has the third highest number of Man of the Match awards in Test cricket, with seventeen
---Akram was the first bowler in international cricket to take more than 400 wickets in both forms of the game and only Muttiah Muralitharan has since achieved this and also held the record for the most wickets in Cricket World Cups, a total of 55 in 38 matches. Australia's Glenn McGrath broke the record during the 2007 Cricket World Cup, ending with a final tally of 71 from 39 matches. on passing akram record
 “               Wasim Akram, to me, is one of the greatest bowlers of all time.
                 Left-armer, swung it both ways with the new ball and he was so dangerous with the old ball.
                To go past him is something I will always remember.
                Probably the other side of the coin is that if you play long enough,
                you're going to break records here and there.        ”
                                                                             — Glenn McGrath
---In his Test career, Akram took 414 wickets in 104 matches, a Pakistani record, at an average of 23.62 and scored 2,898 runs, at an average of 22.64.
---In One Day Internationals, Akram took 502 wickets in 356 appearances, at an average of 23.52 and scored 3,717 runs, at an average of 16.52.

MODELING:
He had walked in the Pantene Bridal Couture Week 2011 which was an event of Style 360.

INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION :
National side Pakistan
Test debut (cap 102) 25 January 1985 v New Zealand
Last Test 9 January 2002 v Bangladesh
ODI debut (cap 53) 23 November 1984 v New Zealand
Last ODI 4 March 2003 v Zimbabwe
ODI shirt no. 3
Domestic team information
Years Team
2003 Hampshire
2000–2001 Lahore
1997–1998 Lahore
1992–2002 Pakistan International Airlines
1988–1998 Lancashire
1986–1987 Lahore
1985–1986 Lahore
1984–1986 Pakistan Automobiles Corporation
Career statistics
Competition Test ODI FC LA
Matches 104 356 257    594
Runs scored 2898 3717 7161 6993
Batting average 22.64   16.52 22.73 18.90
100s/50s 3/7 0/6          7/24      0/17
Top score  257*  86 257* 89*
Balls bowled 22627 18186    50278 29719
Wickets 414 502 1042 881
Bowling average 23.62 23.52    21.64 21.91
5 wickets in innings 25 6             70 12
10 wickets in match 5 0 16         0
Best bowling 7/119      5/15       8/30 5/10
Catches/stumpings 44/0 88/0         97/0 147/0