Image Credit- ICC
Although it was quite nice, it wasn’t dismissing Kumar Sangakkara twice in his first Test match. or the MCG five-fer, though that was also very enjoyable. Not quite as dramatic as Mitchell Johnson’s swooping outswinger at Headingley, though it’s hard to top that visually. It wasn’t even the giddy high before the juddering comedown during the eight-ball session at Lord’s where he claimed four middle-order wickets against England.
The opening over of the 2009 T20 World Cup final appears to be the most informative passage from the early canon of Muhammad Amir. This is a tale you are familiar with. The Lord’s. Dilshan the firestarter. Shahzaib came around the bend. Ian Bishop called it, loud and proud. Delirium everywhere in the stands. It will be 15 years since that over, which proved to be a window into Amir’s history at that time and a glimpse into his future, when the ninth T20 World Cup enters its Super Eights next month.
Given the significance of the over and the fact that Amir is an avid bowler, it is not unexpected that he recalls it in some detail. Perhaps most telling is the fact that, at the age of 17, just six games and two weeks into his senior Pakistani career, he came up with the idea.
“I had watched Dilshan bat through the tournament and I figured he was hitting the Dilscoop whenever he was getting stuck in an innings,” Amir says. “You know how a bowler has a stock ball? This was his stock shot. When he gets stuck, he plays that shot. It was his release, his get-out shot. To stop it I thought, why not put him on the back foot?”
Nevertheless, the over’s near-perfect execution—which starts with a bouncer first ball—is what makes it so spectacular. Angled across Dilshan, speeding past his right ear and just over his right shoulder at over 88 miles per hour. Just as challenging to get right first up as the inswinging yorker can be is the bouncer. If you put in too little or too much effort, it can sail over for wides on a rough track like Lord’s that day. If you move in the incorrect queue or too quickly, it turns into a gimme. If executed correctly, though, it has an effect even if no wickets are lost.
Amir would have been familiar with the harsh nature of this tiny combat, taking the batter down before they take you down, even though he was only a teenager.
In the end, he has managed to return to that harsh world after a protracted and complicated hiatus; he is no longer the custom bowler imagined from clear blue skies, but rather a mass-produced object from a sky the colour of concrete. Now, stripped of any other baggage, he is a pure T20 bowler, touring the world like he did the day he was discovered. He is a pared-down run-denier who has honed all of his instincts and tools from that childhood.
Maybe Pakistan is looking for someone with Amir’s wide range of expertise and perspective—we’re talking about 15 years of experience combined with two ICC titles—to balance out Naseem and Shaheen’s idealistic outlook. This is one of the most robust fast-bowling careers in Pakistan today, which is saying something considering Amir’s career pauses. However, since this is a Pakistani selection, it’s most likely nothing of the kind.
Perhaps they are hoping that after all these years, the child who was once clever above his years is even wiser.