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Every person has their own judgment, and every topic will always have arguments both for and against. No matter how much you try to convince someone, in most cases they will stick to their own decision and try to justify it with their own logic.
However, a rational and intelligent person always prefers to accept the opinions of experts. The same applies to cricket — the opinions of experts should be prioritized over that of general people.
But before that, we need to understand: who are considered experts?
Just because someone played very well doesn’t automatically make them an expert. And someone who played only moderately well may still understand cricket very deeply.
Now let us try to understand what “the best” actually means.
2
Imagine you ask 100 experts to create a list of the greatest batsmen of all time.
Now, some may say Bradman, some Sobers, some Viv Richards, some Tendulkar, some Kohli, and others may pick someone else.
But one thing is almost certain — no one will say the greatest is Mohammad Azharuddin.
Among these 100 experts, whoever is considered the greatest by the most number of them will receive that title.
In this group of 100, if even one expert considers Brian Lara the greatest of all time, then Lara too will be considered the greatest — but only to a very small segment of the world. However, the one whom most experts choose as the greatest must be accepted as the greatest overall.
After that, the one ranked next highest by experts will be considered second, and the one with the fewest votes among the mentioned players will be at the bottom. And the one who is not considered the greatest by anyone won’t even appear in the list.
Accepting this judgment does not mean that the person who picked Lara must change their opinion. There is no need for that. But if that person still insists on arguing that the judgment was unfair, then that becomes a problem. You have to accept some form of judgment in the end. There is no fixed formula for determining the greatest of all time or comparing two players from the same era. So debates always remain.
Nowadays, you will find many online polls about “the greatest”. But the question is: which poll will you accept?
Your judgment or mine may even be better than many so-called experts. But at the end of the day, we should accept the collective opinion of experts of the sport. That opinion cannot be individual — it must be collective. Because individual opinions can produce scattered results, influenced by personal preferences.
But in collective voting, that chance becomes much smaller.
3
There have probably been many selections of the greatest cricketers based on collective voting by experts. But the most notable one is the selection of the greatest cricketer of the century by Wisden. One hundred judges were asked to choose five cricketers as the greatest of the century.
Bradman was the only cricketer to receive all 100 votes. After Sobers, who received 90 votes, the third-highest was Jack Hobbs with 30 votes.
From this selection, it becomes clear what Bradman’s position truly is in the eyes of experts.
He is the only cricketer to win the ‘Wisden Leading Cricketer of the Year’ award 10 times.
Apart from Sobers with 8 awards, no other cricketer has received this award more than three times. One of the arguments against calling Bradman the greatest is that he played only 52 Tests.
Would his average have remained the same if he had played 100 Tests? There is no accurate way to calculate that probability. But by looking at other contexts, we can estimate a few things. Bradman played 338 innings in first-class cricket. His average there is 95.14.
Generally, the first-class and Test averages of all great batsmen remain quite close.
Even if Bradman had played 100 Tests, it seems unlikely that his average would have dropped below 90.
Another thing to remember is that the period of Bradman’s Test career lost due to the war was typically the time when a batsman is at his most mature.
In first-class cricket, in the 221 innings where Bradman did not score a century, his average was 58.20 — which is higher than the averages of greats like Tendulkar, Lara, Sangakkara, Viv Richards, and Gavaskar even including their centuries and double centuries.
Sachin Tendulkar has the highest number of runs in Test cricket.
If Bradman had batted in 329 innings like Tendulkar, then based on his average, he would have scored 32,880 Test runs.
Even if Bradman had scored zero in the next 52 consecutive innings, his average would still remain equal to that of Sachin or Lara.
You may find a few arguments for not accepting Bradman as the greatest of all time.
But whoever you pick instead of him, you will undoubtedly find many more arguments against that choice.
Now let us move on to Waqar Younis.
4
Where would Waqar Younis rank if there were a voting process for the greatest bowlers in cricket?
In Wisden’s list of the five greatest Test bowlers of the last century, Waqar did not make it.
Those selected were, in order:
Muralitharan, Hadlee, Sydney Barnes, Warne, and Grimmett.
However, Waqar did make it into the list of the five greatest ODI bowlers.
Those were, in order:
Wasim Akram, Allan Donald, Waqar Younis, Glenn McGrath, and Joel Garner.
Now the question is: if a list of the greatest bowlers were made today, would Waqar be number one?
Answer is no.
But Waqar would undoubtedly make the top 10 with eyes closed.
However, he was one of those rare bowlers who could have been number one.
Before understanding why he couldn’t become number one despite having the ability, let us first get to know a few things about Waqar.
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Waqar Younis began playing first-class cricket at the age of just 17.
But around that time, due to an injury, the little finger of his left hand had to be amputated. Even after that, he returned from injury and continued his cricketing career.
Once, after Imran Khan saw him bowling in a televised match, he called Waqar into the national team. His Test debut came at home against India. Right from the start, he terrified the batsmen with his pace; in the very first innings he took four wickets, including those of Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev. From his debut onward, he gradually began to shine.
He reached his 50th ODI wicket in just 27 matches.In the year following his debut, he took 47 wickets in only 19 ODIs at an average of 12.63. In the same period, he took 49 wickets in 9 Test matches. Because of this success, he received offers from county cricket.
Playing for Surrey in the 1991 season, he took 113 wickets at an average of only 14.65. This success earned him the award for Cricketer of the Year in 1992. He continued to show signs of greatness in both Test and ODI cricket.
He set the record for being the fastest to 300 and 350 ODI wickets — a record later broken by Brett Lee.
However, the record for being the fastest to 400 ODI wickets still belongs to him.Also, among bowlers with at least 200 Test wickets, he ranks second only to Dale Steyn in average (43.4). In 1997, he played county cricket for Glamorgan and helped them win the championship — their first since 1969.
One of his most remarkable performances that season was his 7 wickets for 25 runs against Lancashire. In that match he took a hat-trick and narrowly missed another. Since that season, Glamorgan have not won the county championship again.
In cricket, scoring a century is an achievement of great prestige for a batsman. Similarly, for a bowler, taking five wickets in an innings is even more prestigious — especially in ODI cricket.
You may ask, why is that?
Because ODI cricket is a 50-over game. In this format, a batsman can, in theory, open the innings and bat throughout, facing more than 150 balls. But a bowler, no matter how skilled, cannot bowl more than 60 deliveries in a match. Even those 60 balls must be bowled in separate spells; he cannot bowl them continuously.
Within such limitations, when a bowler manages to take five wickets in an ODI innings, he must deliver an extraordinary performance that day. How many times can a bowler produce such extraordinary performances in his career? To understand that, you need to look at some statistics. Statistics show that the bowler with the most five-wicket hauls in ODI cricket is Waqar Younis. He achieved this feat 13 times.
But this number alone does not fully convey the magnitude of his achievement.
The second-highest in this list is Muttiah Muralitharan, who achieved it 10 times — but he needed 350 matches to do so, whereas Waqar played only 262.
Bowlers like Glenn McGrath, Wasim Akram, or Curtly Ambrose have taken five wickets only 7, 6, and 4 times respectively.
When you compare them, Waqar Younis’s record seems even more astounding.
Just as batting has a record for consecutive centuries, bowling has a record for consecutive five-wicket hauls.
In this area too, Waqar Younis is well ahead of others. In the entire history of ODI cricket, bowlers have taken five wickets in two consecutive matches only 12 times. Waqar Younis is the only bowler to have done it three times. Among them, he once took five wickets in three consecutive matches — something no one else has ever achieved in ODI history.
Another record can be added:
Waqar Younis is also the youngest bowler to take a five-wicket haul in ODIs (18 years 164 days).
6
The question is: despite so many achievements, why is Waqar Younis still so underrated in discussions about the greatest of all time?
Now it will try to explain, point by point, the reasons why—at least in my personal view—Waqar’s career did not have the ideal ending.
The wear and tear of county cricket
He spent a large portion of his career playing county cricket. Because of this heavy workload, he could not deliver his best in international cricket later on. Many cricketers have faded away after long county stints. Even Saqlain Mushtaq, his contemporary, could not prolong his career largely because of county cricket. For this reason, the Australian Cricket Board did not allow Shane Warne to play county cricket at one stage.
Similarly, the Indian Cricket Board never allowed players like Sachin Tendulkar or Anil Kumble to play too many county seasons.
Injuries
For a fast bowler, injury is the biggest enemy. At the same time, it is also their constant companion. This, too, was a major hurdle in Waqar’s career.
The rise of Shoaib Akhtar
Just when Waqar was battling injury and struggling for form, Shoaib Akhtar burst onto the scene. This was another reason why Waqar struggled to secure a regular place in the team.
Failure in World Cups
For some reason, his performances in the cricket World Cup—the biggest stage—were never satisfactory. Despite being in terrific form, he missed the 1992 World Cup due to injury.
He was brilliant in the 1996 World Cup at home. In only 6 matches, he took 13 wickets—the second highest after Anil Kumble’s 15 wickets in 7 matches. But in the quarter-final against India, his last two overs went for 44 runs, which is often described as the turning point of the match. Pakistan crashed out in the quarter-final.
In the 1999 World Cup, the rise of another speed demon, Shoaib Akhtar, prevented him from getting a place in the team. He got one chance in a group-stage match against Bangladesh, and Pakistan lost that match.
In the 2003 World Cup, under his captaincy, a star-studded Pakistan team was eliminated in the first round.
PCB decisions
After the failure of the 2003 World Cup, the Pakistan Cricket Board wanted to remove the senior players and build a young team for the next World Cup.
As a result, senior players like Saeed Anwar, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq, and Inzamam-ul-Haq were dropped.
Inzamam eventually returned, but the others did not.
Conflict with Wasim Akram
This is one of the biggest reasons he fell behind in the race for “the greatest.”
At one point in their careers, the conflict between him and Wasim became so severe that the two did not speak for many days. At the stage when Waqar needed some support, Wasim often preferred to pick emerging bowlers instead of backing him.
7
In reality, the most terrifying version of Waqar Younis belonged to the early phase of his career.
Towards the end, he could no longer instill fear in batsmen the way Wasim or McGrath did. His career ended at just 32/33 years of age. In contrast, fast bowlers like Wasim Akram and Glenn McGrath continued to dominate world cricket until the age of 36/37.
Most people tend to remember the ending more than the beginning. And although Waqar’s beginning was like a fairy tale, his ending was undoubtedly tragic. Had he been able to dominate world cricket until 36/37 like Wasim or McGrath, perhaps the very first name people would mention as the greatest fast bowler would be Waqar Younis.
Since that did not happen, today Waqar is remembered not as “the greatest of all time” but as “one of the greatest of all time.”
