Former Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar, who is generally in the news for his outlandish remarks, has again stoked a bit of a controversy with his comments which claim that his teammate and destructive opener Imran Nazir was a more talented batsman in comparison to Indian batting great Virender Sehwag, but Nazir didn’t have the brain which the explosive Indian opener had.
“I don’t think Imran Nazir had the brain that Sehwag had. I don’t think Sehwag had the talent that Imran Nazir had. There is no comparison with regards to talent. We tried to contain him a little,” Akhtar was quoted as saying on a TV show by Cricket Pakistan.
Shoaib, however, believes Pakistan team didn’t use Nazir well else they would have had a better player in him than Sehwag.
“When he hit a brutal hundred against India in a match, I asked them to play Imran Nazir consistently but they didn’t listen,” he said.
“It is unfortunate that we do not know how to take care of our brands. We could have had a player better than Virender Sehwag in Imran Nazir. He had all the shots while also being a good fielder. We could have utilised him brilliantly but we just couldn’t,” he added.
The 44-year-old also revealed that Javed Miandad was the reason why Imran used to do well.
“Whenever Imran Nazir played well, it was because of Javed Miandad. He would be in the dressing room and trying to get him to play. Whenever he played a bad shot Javed bhai would send him a message in order to keep him focused,” Akhtar further added.
Nazir played just 8 Tests, 79 ODIs and 25 T20Is for Pakistan, amassing 427, 1895 and 500 runs in the three formats respectively.
Sehwag, on the other hand, represented India in 104 Tests, 251 ODIs and 19 T20Is, scoring 8586, 8273 and 394 runs respectively.
