Skip to content
CricketTaken

Wasim Akram

Pakistan·Bowler·Age 26

Career

Wasim Akram is generally regarded as the finest left-arm fast bowler the game has produced, and the player who did most to make reverse swing a mainstream skill. He bowled off a short run with a whippy, open-chested action that gave batters almost no sight of the ball before release.

His two wickets in successive deliveries in the 1992 World Cup final turned that match and won Pakistan the trophy. He could swing the new ball both ways and the old ball later and sharper than anyone, and he was a dangerous lower-order hitter who once made 257 not out in a Test.

Highlights

  • Took two wickets in successive balls in the 1992 World Cup final
  • Widely regarded as the greatest left-arm fast bowler in history
  • Made reverse swing a mainstream fast-bowling skill
  • Scored 257 not out in a Test match as a lower-order batter

Overview

What the figures show

Wasim Akram is listed as a bowler from Pakistan. The competitions covered on this site hold no completed matches under this name.

International

Career record

FormatMInnsRunsHSAvgSR100s50s
ODIfrom 200265713323.67102.900

Figures marked with a year cover only part of this career — the ball-by-ball archive behind these numbers begins in 2001 for Tests and 2002 for One Day Internationals.

Questions

About Wasim Akram

Why is Wasim Akram considered the best left-arm fast bowler?

He combined pace, a deceptive short run-up and open-chested action, and mastery of both conventional and reverse swing, which let him take wickets in every condition.

What did Wasim Akram do in the 1992 World Cup final?

He dismissed Allan Lamb and Chris Lewis with successive deliveries, a double strike that decided the match and won Pakistan their first World Cup.

Was Wasim Akram a good batter?

A dangerous lower-order hitter — he scored 257 not out in a Test against Zimbabwe, at the time the highest score by a number eight.

Also on CricketTaken

Players alongside Wasim Akram

Team-mates from this player's IPL seasons first, then others from the same country.

How this page was worked out

Where these figures come from

Sources for this profile

  • International figures computed from Cricsheet ball-by-ball data, used under the Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0.
  • Date of birth, playing style and photograph come from a third-party player feed, matched by name.

How the numbers are derived

  • A wide is not a ball faced; a no ball is.
  • Byes and leg byes are not charged to the bowler; wides and no balls are.
  • Six kinds of dismissal are credited to a bowler. A run out is not one of them.
  • An average is runs over dismissals, and is left blank rather than shown as infinite.
  • Every rule in full →

What this page does not cover

  • Only the competitions named above. A record elsewhere in this player’s career is not counted here and is not implied by these totals.
  • Ball-by-ball coverage of Test cricket begins in 2001 and of ODIs in 2002.
  • A figure here that looks wrong is worth reporting — how to report it.
All players