Waqar Younis career statistics

Waqar Younis Maitla (born 16 November 1971) is a Pakistani cricket coach, commentator and former fast bowler who captained the Pakistan national team. He played 87 Test matches and 262 One Day Internationals for Pakistan between 1989 and 2003, taking 373 Test wickets and 416 ODI wickets. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest fast bowlers the game has produced.

The numbers alone understate him. Waqar's defining quality was the ability to reverse-swing a cricket ball at high pace — a skill he and bowling partner Wasim Akram used to build one of the most feared new-ball attacks in world cricket. In his prime he was genuinely quick, and combined that pace with late movement that made him almost unplayable with an older ball.

The core career statistics

The figures below are the headline numbers of Waqar's international career, the ones most often searched for.

Two records stand out from that set:

• Second-best strike rate of any bowler with more than 350 Test wickets, behind only Dale Steyn — meaning he took wickets faster, on average, than almost anyone who bowled as long as he did.
• Youngest bowler ever to take 400 ODI wickets. He is the third-highest ODI wicket-taker in Pakistan's history.

He is also placed in the top ten of all time based on ICC rankings, and finished his career as the second-highest Test wicket-taker for Pakistan.

The youngest Test captain in Pakistan's history

In 1991, Waqar became the youngest man ever to captain Pakistan in Test cricket, at 22 years and 15 days. As of 2021 that remains the fourth youngest Test captain in the history of the game.

His captaincy was not, in the end, the making of his reputation. He had to contend with ball-tampering allegations and a series of controversies, and after Pakistan's group-stage exit at the 2003 World Cup he gave up the captaincy and was dropped from international selection.

The partnership that defined an era

Waqar and Wasim Akram opened the bowling together for Pakistan regularly through the 1990s, forming what is generally described as one of the most feared and potent attacks in world cricket. Two left-and-right arm fast bowlers, both capable of swing at pace, shared the new ball for the bulk of a decade.

Waqar also achieved a hat-trick in a One Day International against New Zealand in 1994, one of the defining moments of his peak years.

English county cricket

English audiences became fully aware of Waqar's talent in the early 1990s, when he played county cricket for Surrey. In 1991 he took 113 wickets in 582 overs for Surrey at an average of 14.65, topping that season's first-class bowling averages while carrying an otherwise moderate county attack.

He went on to win the English County Championship with Glamorgan in 1997, taking 68 wickets that season. His spell of 7 for 25 against Lancashire at Liverpool on 21 June 1997 included a hat-trick achieved after narrowly missing one.

From the Burewala Express to the coach's box

Waqar's nickname came from his birthplace. He was born in Burewala, Vehari district, Punjab, to a Punjabi Jat family, and the cricket media of the late 1980s and 1990s knew him as the "Burewala Express" — occasionally, also, "Wiki".

His route into the game was unusual even by the standards of Pakistani fast bowling. He studied at a boarding school in Lahore for about three years, then at Sadiq Public School in Bahawalpur, and later studied arts and economics at Government College, Burewala. He was raised in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, where his father worked, returned to Pakistan as an adolescent, and was an all-round athlete at school — a runner, javelin thrower, high jumper and pole-vaulter. He began as a leg-spinner before choosing pace.

He had played only six first-class matches when he was picked for the Pakistan camp, spotted by former captain Imran Khan. His senior international debut came against India on 16 November 1989 — the same match in which Sachin Tendulkar made his own debut. Waqar took four wickets in the drawn match, including those of Tendulkar and Kapil Dev.

Coaching and commentary career

After retiring as a player, Waqar moved into coaching and broadcasting. The main appointments:

He has also worked as a television sports commentator for the Nine Network in Australia and for Ten Sports in the United Arab Emirates. Since 2000 he has been married to Faryal, a Pakistani-Australian doctor, and the family lives in Castle Hill, New South Wales, Australia. They have three children.

Summary

Waqar Younis's career is best understood as a fast bowler whose peak was defined by reverse swing at genuine pace, recorded in the two figures most people search for: 373 Test wickets and 416 ODI wickets. He was the youngest man to captain Pakistan in Tests, the youngest ever to 400 ODI wickets, and half of the most feared opening partnership of his generation. He then spent two decades as a coach and commentator at the highest level.

And all of it traces back to a canal-irrigated agricultural town in central Punjab whose name became his nickname.