Akram, Wasim

Wasim Akram, byname King of Swings, (born June 3, 1966, Lahore, Pakistan), Pakistani cricket player generally regarded as the greatest left-handed bowler of all time, arguably among the very best fast bowlers ever, and an outstanding all-rounder, who helped lead Pakistan to the World Cup championship of one-day international (ODI) cricket in 1992.

Akram was born into an upper-middle-class family and was brought up in the comfortable suburb of Modeltown. His father was a successful businessman, and Akram was sent to the Cathedral School in Lahore, where his main sporting obsession was table tennis. From age 10 he lived with his grandparents, and his grandfather, a passionate cricket follower, introduced Akram to the sport. He studied fine arts at Islamia College, Lahore, but his success in local club cricket brought him to the attention of the state selectors and the international side. He made his first-class, ODI, and Test debuts within the space of three months at the turn of the 1984–85 season as a teenager, and, barring periods of injury or political upheaval, was thereafter a regular member of the Pakistan side, which he captained frequently before his retirement in 2003. Polite and eloquent, Akram was a great favourite in all parts of the world, most notably in England, where he produced several devastating performances with both bat and ball for his county, Lancashire.

Although his staccato run-up and hurried delivery stride betrayed the lack of proper coaching early in his career, his batting, always aggressive and often destructive (most notably during a 257-run performance against Zimbabwe in 1996–97), put him firmly into the all-rounder class occupied by such greats as his Pakistani mentor Imran Khan, Ian Botham of England, and Sir Richard Hadlee of New Zealand. As a bowler, Akram was capable of moving the ball late both in the air and off the pitch with subtle changes of pace, and he had one of the most varied arsenals in cricket history, with inswing, outswing, yorkers, and bouncers being just some of the weapons at his disposal. He and Pakistani teammate Waqar Younis developed such overwhelming command of their revolutionary use of reverse swing that it prompted allegations of ball-tampering.

In the 1998–99 season Akram captained Pakistan to the final of the Cricket World Cup, but inexperience emerged in their defeat by Australia. Also that season Pakistani cricket was dominated by allegations of match fixing. Akram was implicated but never charged, and he was officially cleared in September 1999. At the end of his career he had taken 414 wickets in Test cricket and 502 in ODI.

Following retirement from the game, Akram became a cricket commentator for ESPN STAR Sports. He also served as a bowling coach for various teams. In 2009 he was inducted into the International Cricket Council’s Hall of Fame.