Mohammad Zahid
Encyclopedia
Mohammad Zahid is a Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

i cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er. He is a right-handed batsman and a right-arm fast bowler. Zahid is the first Pakistani cricketer to take ten wickets on his debut, scoring an eleven-wicket two-innings haul against New Zealand
New Zealand cricket team
The New Zealand cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, are the national cricket team representing New Zealand. They played their first in 1930 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth country to play Test cricket. It took the team until 1955–56 to win a Test, against the...

.

Career

Having suffered a back injury and subsequently having to go through back surgery halfway through his career, he continued to play until January 2003. Zahid's last Test was against South Africa
South African cricket team
The South African national cricket team represent South Africa in international cricket. They are administrated by Cricket South Africa.South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council, also known as ICC, with Test and One Day International, or ODI, status...

 which saw a record first-wicket partnership by the South Africans of 368 runs, shared between Gary Kirsten
Gary Kirsten
Gary Kirsten is a former South African cricketer, and the World Cup winning coach of the Indian cricket team. He played 101 Test matches and 185 One-day internationals for South Africa between 1993 and 2004, mainly as an opening batsman...

 and Herschelle Gibbs
Herschelle Gibbs
Herschelle Herman Gibbs is a South African cricketer, more specifically a batsman.Gibbs was schooled at St Joseph's Marist College and then Diocesan College in Rondebosch...

.

He took 11 wicket
Wicket
In the sport of cricket the word wicket has several distinct meanings:-Definitions of wicket:Most of the time, the wicket is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch...

s in his debut test against New Zealand and became the only Pakistani to have taken 10 wickets or more on his debut. Besides this, he bowled an exceptional over to Brian Lara
Brian Lara
Brian Charles Lara, TC, OCC, AM is a former West Indian international cricket player. Lara is generally regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time...

 (West Indies), who was then the premier batsman of the world: Lara played and missed the first three deliveries due to the sheer pace that Zahid generated, before edging the fourth ball for a caught behind. This performance caught the eyes of the cricketing pundits.

Fastest bowler debate


Mohammad Zahid was noted for his pace from an early age and after his encounter with Brian Lara, Zahid was described by the left-handed batsmen as the fastest bowler in the world. The lack of speed cameras and Zahid's short career span before serious back injury has curtailed much of the initial hype over his pace as many fans, pundits and players wonder what actual speeds were reached by his bowling.

Zahid's career began within short proximity of fellow Pakistani paceman Shoaib Akhtar
Shoaib Akhtar
Shoaib Akhtar is a former Pakistani right arm fast bowler in cricket, who is regarded as the fastest bowler in the history of cricket. He set an official world record by achieving the fastest delivery, when he clocked in at 161.3 km/h in his bowling speed, twice at a cricket match against...

 who later went on to record the fastest ever recorded delivery in cricket in the 2003 World Cup. In a recent interview on a chat show with Rameez Raja
Rameez Raja
Rameez Hasan Raja is a former Pakistani right handed batsman in cricket, who represented the Pakistan cricket team during the 1980s and 1990s. He also worked as captain of the national team...

, Shoaib Akhtar accepted that Mohammad Zahid was yards quicker than him when he was bowling in 1997 and after that Shoaib picked up more pace than Zahid, once again fuelling the debate of the speed of Mohammad Zahid and if he may have been one of the fastest bowlers of all time.

Injury

He picked up a back injury in the tour to Sri Lanka and after his back operation could not make his return to the world of cricket. He did come back for a short stint in the series against South Africa in 1998 but had lost his pace considerably and subsequently his line & length, eventually he was dropped from the Pakistan team.

Current

Zahid plays club cricket for Wickersley in the South Yorkshire Cricket League and also plays regional cricket in Pakistan.

External links

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