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Abdul Razzaq took a U-turn and came under the spotlight for his controversial statement regarding Jasprit Bumrah.
The all-rounder came under fire last year for calling Bumrah a “baby bowler” and that he would have actually taken him apart had he faced him. Razzaq went on to acknowledge that the pacer was nowhere as compared to the speedsters of his time.
On the contrary, Jasprit Bumrah has been among the best fast bowlers from the current players, troubling the best in all three formats at all stages of the match. Currently, the 26- year-old is ranked second in ICC rankings in ODIs for bowlers.
However, the Lahore-born defended his previous remarks as per the latest news by stating he was only comparing him to the past greats. The 40-year old Abdul Razzaq went on to say that Bumrah is certainly on track to become a world-class bowler but indeed rated the ancient greats of high quality.
“I do not have anything personal against Bumrah. I was simply comparing him with the likes of Glenn McGrath, Wasim Akram, Curtly Ambrose, Shoaib Akhtar. It would have been much tougher to face them. My comments were misconstrued. He is heading towards becoming a world-class bowler. But in our times, the bowlers were of a much higher caliber. Not many can dispute that” Razzaq stated.
Razzaq played 265-ODI in his career and thinks that the standard of cricket seems to have gone down. Razzaq has complaints about the extraordinary rise of T20 cricket that might have been responsible for not cultivating cricketers of an elite class. There is relatively much less pressure when facing speedsters today.
“You don’t feel the same pressure facing the current crop of pacers. Overall, there is a bad patch in world cricket. We are not producing world-class players the way we used to 10-15 years ago. You had Tendulkar, Zaheer, Sehwag, Ganguly in the same team. They would have walked into any team. Maybe too much T20 cricket is responsible for this decline.” Abdul Razzaq added further.
