Wasim Akram’s Warning: Where Are the Batters After 10 Years of PSL?
Wasim Akram has seen enough. Pakistan’s greatest fast bowler cut through the usual excuses in Lahore, laying bare what he believes is the core of the country’s Test crisis: a barren pipeline of batting talent and a system that keeps changing faces instead of fixing foundations.
The trigger, he argued, should have come long ago.
Pakistan’s home-and-away Test series defeats to Bangladesh, he said, were not just embarrassing results but flashing red lights for the game’s administrators. Those losses, in Akram’s view, should have forced urgent reforms. They did not.
PSL under the microscope
Akram turned his gaze on the Pakistan Super League, now a decade old and widely hailed as one of the country’s great cricketing success stories. For him, the numbers do not add up where it matters most.
“It has been 10 years since the PSL started, but has a single batter been produced by the PSL?”
he asked, questioning whether the league had actually delivered top-tier batting options for the national side. Yes, he conceded, the tournament has unearthed bowlers. But in terms of “noteworthy batting talent,” he sees a worrying void.
That gap, he suggested, is now being brutally exposed in Test cricket.
Akram was blunt about the split in Pakistan’s fortunes across formats. White-ball cricket, he felt, remains competitive. The longer game is a different story. He described the state of Pakistan’s Test cricket as “bad,” a damning verdict from a man who built his legend in that very arena.
India’s teenage prodigy as a reality check
To underline how far Pakistan’s production line has fallen behind, Akram pointed across the border.
He highlighted the emergence of a 15-year-old batting talent in India — an apparent reference to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi — as the kind of precocious player Pakistan simply is not producing. “I think when we produce a batting talent like the 14-year old then we will see improvement coming through,” he said, using the teenager as a symbol of early, high-quality development.
For Akram, that is not about envy. It is about standards.
‘Coach won’t fix this’ – Akram on PCB’s revolving door
The debate around Pakistan’s next coach leaves him largely unmoved. Whether it is him, Gary Kirsten, or anyone else, Akram believes the central issue stays the same: the coach can only work with the players available.
Changing the man in the dugout, he argued, does little if the raw material does not improve.
Instead, he urged the Pakistan Cricket Board to back its domestic structure and give it time — three to four years — to bear fruit. Constant chopping and changing, he suggested, only masks deeper structural flaws. Long-term planning and patience, not knee-jerk reactions, are what he wants to see.
He did not spare his own emotions either, admitting he is as disappointed as any fan with recent performances.
‘Revive club cricket, or forget red-ball revival’
Akram’s solution starts at the grassroots, not at the top.
“Club cricket needs to be revived if we want improvement in red ball cricket,”
he said, calling for serious financial commitment. He urged the PCB to spend 100 million rupees each in Karachi and Lahore, insisting that real talent comes from the club scene.
For him, this is where Pakistan’s next generation of Test batters must be forged, not just in high-profile franchise leagues.
He also took aim at the revolving door in the national side. Pakistan, he noted, have kept rotating players without solving the underlying problems. Names change, but the flaws remain. “There should be consistency in the team,” he said, yet what he sees is the same group of players “just keep coming and going.”
Technical failings laid bare in England
Pakistan’s current tour of England provided fresh evidence for Akram’s concerns.
He criticised the batters’ approach against the home attack, particularly against Ollie Robinson. In his view, Pakistan’s players stayed rooted in the crease, failing to move their front foot forward in seaming, swinging conditions that demand decisive footwork.
“You need to play with courage,”
he said. But courage, in his eyes, must be underpinned by talent and proper technique. Without that, the bravado collapses quickly under English skies.
Fast bowlers under the speed gun
Even in Pakistan’s traditional strength — fast bowling — Akram urged restraint and realism.
He dismissed the obsession with isolated speed-gun readings. Bowling one ball at 150 km/h, he said, is “no big deal.” The real measure of a quick is whether he can operate around 140 km/h through an entire day, spell after spell. That, he argued, is what Test cricket demands.
He warned against premature hype around emerging pacers. Young fast bowlers, he believes, should be allowed to play, learn and develop before anyone rushes to label them the next great hope.
Shaheen, Akif and a missed opportunity
Shaheen Afridi inevitably entered the conversation. Akram described the left-arm quick as an experienced bowler and admitted he did not know why Shaheen’s pace had dipped. Still, he felt a bowler of Shaheen’s stature should have been part of the tour to England.
He also pointed to Akif Javed as someone he would have liked to see in the mix. “If it were up to me, I would have asked for Akif Javed, as he bowled well recently in England,” Akram said, hinting at a selection call he believes Pakistan missed.
A call to choose roots over quick fixes
Akram’s critique goes beyond one series, one coach, or one selection meeting. It cuts to the heart of Pakistan’s Test decline and the uneasy question of what the system is really producing.
His message to the PCB is clear: stop rearranging the furniture and start rebuilding the house. Invest in clubs. Trust the domestic structure. Demand better batters. Give young quicks time, not headlines.
Because until Pakistan can point to its own teenage batting sensation, its own conveyor belt of technically sound, fearless red-ball players, the country’s greatest fast bowler will keep asking the same uncomfortable question: where is the next generation coming from?
