A bright prospect. Review on Irfan Pathan

Irfan Pathan made his debut in the test series down under. He was really impressive. As a debutant he was excellent and against a country like australia making such a good debut is a great achievment.

He also came into the indian team when it desperately needed a new fresh fast bowler. Lakshmipathy balaji is also very good, but I find Irfan a better player. He has grabbed attention in the recent past because of his accurate bowling. He also won the icc award for the 'emerging player of the year'. He deserves it. If he does not scale the heights of Srinath or even Akram, I will be surprised.

He has shown tremendous potential in swinging the ball. He is quick enough and is most importantly accurate. In the recent test match against bangladesh, he took 11 wickets! that is an achievment even if it is 'just bangladesh'.

His average and figures are just satisfactory, but those figures don't speak enough for him. There is more in it that meets the eye. Have you noticed the way he bowls? Even if he does not get wickets, he keeps putting pressure on the batsman. This helps other players to get wickets.

Most of the pitches in India are only spinner friendly and so irfan pathan and other budding fast bowlers like him cannot bowl to their full capacity. This is rather unfair. Why do we have spinner friendly tracks? because we have good spinners and we don't have enough good fast bowlers. Why don't we have enough good fast bowlers? that is because we don't have bouncy tracks :) both are inter related. only if we encourage fast bowlers, we will be able to get good pacers.

Now back to the topic. Irfan Pathan has got many tips from wasim akram. His swinging yorker in the series down under was awesome, just wasim style. He is bowling very well as of now and has a long way to go. As he learns more, he will become mature. If we can refine him well, he can be a permanent asset to our team. He has also shown some potential in batting.

Recently, there was a heated debate about him being an all rounder india needed. He is not good enough to be an all rounder yet, but he is capable of it. But he has to concentrate only on his bowling, and keep batting as an extra feature. If we try to groom him as an all rounder, we may be destroying all his talents.

He is also modest and has a positive attitude. He is a real team man. I don't think he minds sitting out of a match to let in someone else. He is very young and in his early stages now, and predicting his future now wouldn't be the correct thing to do. let him progress, let him learn from his own experience.

We cannot do anything more than waiting and watching what happens. mostly, and hopefully it will turn out to be a good and eventful journey for Irfan Pathan.