At the peak of his career, as he prepares to lead Pakistan to the World Cup for the first time, Younis discusses with Faisal Shariff the problems of Pakistan cricket, his famous now on now off relationship with mate Wasim Akram, and the intricacies of reverse swing. Excerpts:

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The Burewala Express A look at the Pakistani speedster's career

The hardest job in world cricket must be to keep the Pakistan flock together – so how do you manage that, on top of bowling fast and leading on the field?

It is a difficult job, especially when you are also bowling and captaining the side. When bowling, you have to focus on line and length and also field placing. Then there is the captaincy – nowadays, cricket is so complicated, there are so many things we have to watch all the time, it all gets difficult sometimes but I think I am coping well. Before captaining the Pakistan side, I have led my bank side and division so I am pretty used to it. But yes, when you are not bowling well, and you have to think of your bowling, then the other becomes more difficult.

Cricket greats believe it is not good to have a bowler as captain, because he tends to either over bowl or under bowl himself. Have you found yourself facing that dilemma?

I don’t think so. Firstly, no one has yet told me I am over-bowling myself simply because I am captain, taking advantage of the position. I try to give a fair chance to everyone. Maybe there are times when I think that if I bowl now I will get a wicket, then I will bowl; but there are also times when I think the other bowler will get the wicket so I give him the ball.

Your career can be broken down into many parts – you’ve been in and out of the side sometimes for no fault of yours, do you feel upset, bitter that many opportunities have been denied to you, do you feel that you could have gotten so many more wickets if those things hadn’t happened?

Yes, but then it is all in the past now and there is not much I can say – it was not my luck, what else to say? Yes, I do regret at times that I have lost something like two and a half years in the middle of my career, when I was at my peak, but that is how cricket is sometimes. At times I have been dropped, at other times I lost form, then there were the injuries which took a toll of my career. All this is part of life, you get on with things, leave regrets behind and take only the positives out of it.

So when you were dropped and yet you felt you deserved a place in the side, what kept you going?

Right now, it is a tough time for me since we are not playing well – but being dropped for reasons other than form or injury was probably the toughest time I have faced.

At that time, not only was I out of the national side, I wasn’t even playing any domestic cricket. So I had to go back to the U-19 level and play with the boys, I had to practice with them and it was very hard.

But playing with the boys was also my biggest motivation, training with youngsters who have got a lot of energy was the best way I could motivate myself and get back to the national side. I started off with the Radco team, developed their side from Under-17, Under-19 boys in a beautiful cricket ground in Rawalpindi. I used to go and play the games and attend the camps, it was fun and also rather difficult – I mean, you are used to playing at the international level and suddenly you are playing at the lowest level there is.

What goes into the making of a great fast bowler?

It looks glamorous, running in, bowling fast, knocking wickets down, but it is a very hard job, it is tough when you get up in the morning, put a foot on the ground and find that everything hurts -- heels, knees, ankles, back, and then you have to motivate yourself, tell yourself you can do it.

You and Wasim Akram form one of the most lethal combinations in world cricket. But you guys had a falling out in between, how much did that affect you personally, and did it affect the combination?

I don’t think it did actually, I think at that particular time when we had some disputes in the team and among ourselves but we were actually performing better, because of jealousy. He would want to do better than me and I wanted to do better than him, so we both over-performed.

For a two year period, we took an amazing amount of wickets. I remember when we went for the New Zealand tour in 1994, we had a dispute just before the tour. I don’t think I have ever seen Wasim bowl that fast, and with that much fire, as he did on that tour – he took 17 or 18 wickets in those three Tests. And I took around 14 wickets at the same time.

Anyway, all that is now in the past. I regret that all this happened, though – such things should not happen to the Pakistan side.

Have you become more responsible as a player and human being after becoming captain?

When you become captain you have to take the responsibility. It looks good when you are picking up the trophy, but a lot of stuff goes into that. You are responsible not only for your own individual performance but also of all sorts of things – like selection, like interacting with the media and the cricket board, so many different things so yes, it tends to mature you as person and player.

They say the Pakistan team is its own worst enemy, that if they walk onto the field without any disputes they can be unbeatable.

Well, we are a very unpredictable side. The boys are talented, that is not the problem – I think it is just that some days, we get put off and don’t give our 100 per cent and then we struggle. I think we are getting better at being consistent – right now, we are going through a small slump but we had a great year and a half before that, so this is temporary, I think things will get better, the team will be back in form soon.

Akram once said the Pakistan team has never been consistent; there is always a streak of inconsistency. Do you as captain agree with that?

It has been an inconsistent side, but it hasn’t been unpredictable. You can’t call us unpredictable, though we are not consistent like the Australians or South Africans who play to one standard and don’t drop their level of performance. We have a few problems, on occasions we drop off from our standard.

Right now you are under tremendous pressure, there is the pressure of performing, there is a lot of talk about your captaincy, is it all working on your mind?

You do get stressed when people come up and talk of what is happening and tell you that you will lose your captaincy. Actually, being captain is not one of my ambitions – I always want to do well, as bowler or captain or both. So this hasn’t affected me too much but it does affect the team, I would think – right now, things are not settled, as far as the captain and coach and manager are concerned.

They say lack of infrastructure is one reason why Pakistan is struggling, do you agree?

I can’t really say much about it because our infrastructure fluctuates very quickly. It all depends on how much money we get out of cricket, how much revenue comes in. I haven’t played first class cricket for a while, I am not with any of the teams I used to play for, United Bank, Radco and National Bank, so without playing first class, I can’t really tell you much about the situation now.

But is infrastructure really necessary? You and Wasim – two of the all time bowling greats – came into the team by chance, you were spotted in the nets and picked up…

That is just a story doing the rounds, but it is not true. I for instance had performed in first class cricket for two years, then I was picked for the camp and only then got picked for the team, I was not just picked up, as they say. Wasim came before me, but he was also playing first class cricket, he was playing for an automobile company called Packo, they asked him to bowl in the Pakistan nets and that is how he got into the side.

Talk to us some more about the art of fast bowling…

It’s a tough job – and the real art lies in two things, one is the way you think, and the second is in the fact that you don’t stop learning. I learn something new every day, bowling is never ending, it keeps evolving. I am really passionate about this game, I only wish I had the body of a 23 year old – with the wisdom and skill I have now, if I had a young body, I could do magic.

You are credited with inventing the art of “reverse swing”…

First, when we were the only ones doing it, they called it ball-tampering; now that everyone knows how to do it they call it reverse swing.

I am not sure who the first one to do it was, but it probably began as early as the sixties and seventies, during the time of Imran Khan and Sarfaraz Nawaz.

We became good at it because we play on surfaces with hardly any grass on it, so the ball gets scuffed up and loses its shine, we have to do something with it, so we discovered that when you shine one side it can go the opposite way.

The textbook says hold it one way and it will swing the other way – I’d like to challenge them to come to Pakistan and show us how. We had to develop the technique of shining it on one side and leaving the other scuffed. The ball then gets heavier on one side and it dips after a certain period in the air.

When you bowl with a ball like that, you know when it will deviate, and that tells us how far up to pitch it. We were successful because we bowled up to the batsman. Martin Crowe used to play such deliveries well, because he watched the ball till the last split second –other batsmen did not know that trick, so they used to drive through the line, miss, and find themselves getting out.

How do you feel about the fact that India and Pakistan are not playing each other?

It is painful. I have been saying this at every press conference, wherever I go, wherever I get a chance. India versus Pakistan is better than the Ashes, if you are a fan of cricket. When we play each other, there is such fire, such competitiveness in the middle – I mean, look at the last time we played, the games in Chennai and Kolkatta, they were amazing. That’s what you want, and that is what we have lost, I think it is a loss for both countries.

The cancellation of so many tours must have had an impact on the Pakistan team...

We haven’t played in Pakistan for a while now. The last time was against New Zealand in May. Playing in neutral venues is not an option, really -- you don’t get the crowds, the excitement, of playing at home. Last year, when we played the West Indies in Sharjah, there was hardly anyone in the stands - it is at such times that I think I’d rather go back and play for Radco.

Also see: The Burewala Express - A photo-feature

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