Nice jogging run-up, smooth simple action, nice gentle medium pace are not the qualities considered good enough to take wickets at the international level these days. In a world where bowling fast means being express, its hard to imagine a fellow with a speed in early 80s and being able to take wickets. Yet despite all this, Mohammad Asif seems unfazed by the drama. With his fellow pace men bowling well into late 80s and mid 90s he is pretty much happy to contain himself and focus only on the job in hand. Putting the opposition under pressure and getting them out. There is no announced drama or expected aggression when he comes to bowl. There is always only one thing in the air and that is the excitement which his bowling brings. Swinging surface, seaming surface, turning wicket, batting wicket, it does not matter to him. He is just focused on working out the batsmen and weaving the magic with his subtle wrists. His mouth is shut but his wrists talk. You hardly seem him sledge or utter a word other than that of a disappointment when a catch is dropped or an edge is missed, and that too, rarely. He is humble in his defeat and silent in victory. The way he works out the opposition batsmen is impeccable. If he bowls an outswinging volley and gets hit for a four, often just passes a smile for he knows that he has his batsmen where he wants them to be. A few more of those and the batsmen think that they have him figured out. What they don’t realize is they are being setup. The loose balls are actually a web being weaved around them and then it comes so predictably yet swiftly. Mostly it is that vicious off cutter that either rips out one of the stumps of traps the batsmen plumb in-front. And so often there is no celebration from Asif. Just a meager smile as if to tell the batsman what a fool he had been in thinking he had Asif figured out. As if to say you still need practice my friend. And all this so silently.
Perhaps the best compliment that can be given to Asif was incidentally given by Asif himself. Around the start of 2004 when Asif played a solitary game for Pakistan and was then dropped due to non performance, the late coach Bob Woolmer suggested that he need not worry and practice more to which Asif replied “Don’t worry coach, my time will come”. And boy has it come so silently.
By: Razi Bilal Khan
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