He is fast. He is aggressive. And on any given day, reserves the power to change the complexion of the game with nagging pace and accuracy; that’s Mohammad Amir for you. It may not be incorrect to suggest that he has been a career that poses more questions than satisfying answers. It’s a sort of novel that has more twists and turns than an average 007 plot, where most turns don’t essentially lead to anything substantial.
For a budding young fast bowler, to focus on the game should’ve been Mohammad Amir’s top priority; not to tamper with the spirit of the sport itself.
Debuting, going away, coming back only to go away: Mohammad Amir
And so it happened. He couldn’t resist. The young, waywardly personality took over. And so, he was gone. For 6 long years, nobody following cricket actively knew anything of him. Mohammad Amir was quite simply, sidelined.
But Amir’s story is true to any box-office hit where the climax compels you to forget the woeful beginning. In effect, Mohammad Amir’s Test career- one that he quite simply turned off own his own a few hours ago- has a handy second half, albeit a forgetful first one.
From the onset of 2016 to 2019, until very recently, Mohammad Amir scalped 68 of his overall 119 Test wickets while in 2009 and 2010, he was able to bag 51 wickets, albeit from 477 overs.
If you go purely by statistics, then a rather untelling fact that he didn’t take a single fifer from 2018 until his retirement in 2019 goes to say that he opted the right thing to do. But can a fifer alone define a career?
If you happen to examine the facts a bit deeper then you’d realize that Amir was bowling as well as he’d ever in Tests. From the onset of 2017-until his retirement, he took 38 of his overall 119 scalps. That’s nearly 45 percent of his overall tally. In addition, his bowling average during this period was 25- the yardstick of efficiency you’d expect from a cunning, miserly fast bowler.
Yet, something about Mohammad Amir’s Retirement going off five-day cricket doesn’t seem right. Probably it all boils down to his age. To those to whom it may not occur, even after all these years of being in and then being cast out and then making an elaborate return again, Amir’s only 27.
Heck. That’s no age to even complain of immense workload- right? Then what was it? One supposes there’s less sense in merely resorting to conjecture unless and until the man himself comes clean on what ticked the bomb in him. Right?
Regardless, eminent stars from the establishment of Pakistan Cricket have offered their unabashed views and in that regard, what Wasim Akram had to say was rather interesting.
“To me, Mohammad Amir’s Retirement from Test cricket is a bit surprising because you peak at 27-28 and Test cricket is where you are judged against the best, it’s the ultimate format,” so said Akram.
Additionally, there was no dearth of other reactions, such as the ones from former captain and decorated batsman Ramiz Raja who was shocked by the youngster and suggested, Amir had several years of red-ball cricket left in him to have arrived at such a decision.