Green-grocer’s 21-year-old son who can bowl around 145 kph with his right arm and 135 kph with his left is causing excitement in Pakistan as he targets a spot on the national team
Yasir Jan in Lahore Qalandars’ colours, bowls in a practice session of the Pakistan Premier League in Lahore recently. PIC/AFP
Lahore: A green-grocer’s son who can bowl at pace with either arm is causing excitement in Pakistan as he targets a spot on the national team. Yasir Jan, 21, can generate around 145 kilometres (90 miles) per hour with his right arm and 135 kph with his left, making him a unique talent.
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Even in a country with a history of cricket innovations, such as the reverse sweep and reverse swing, Jan has set tongues wagging.
“Yasir has been an amazing talent,” said his coach Muhammad Salman, tipping him as a definite prospect for the Pakistan Super League’s Lahore Qalandars’ team which has snapped him up on a 10-year-contract.
By swapping arms, a bowler can vary more greatly the angle of his delivery and adapt tactics depending on whether he is facing a right or left-handed batsman.
“It is an advantage. As a captain when you have right-handed and left-handed batsmen batting then you have a luxury to have a bowler who can bowl with both,” said Salman, a former Pakistan batsman.
Total freedom
“There are no restrictions that a bowler can bowl with two hands in an over.” Jan’s talent was uncovered in a Rawalpindi U-19 match, when the batting side was running away with the game and his captain turned to him and made an unusual request.
“We’re already going down. Why don’t you bowl left-handed?” Jan, now 21, recalls his captain saying.
Shocking his opponents
After a barren opening spell as a right-armer, he made the switch and shocked the opposition en route to his first four-for. “The coaches were also shocked. They said, ‘What’s this kid doing?!” he recalls.
His special skill then hit the headlines during a talent hunt for the Lahore Qalandars conducted by former Pakistan fast bowler Aaqib Javed. Jan’s chest-on action emulates his current idol, South Africa’s Dale Steyn, but he said he was inspired by Pakistan’s former right-arm, left-arm pace attack of Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram. “I’ve been bowling with both arms since I was a kid,” he said.
Following the greats
“Waqar bhai and Wasim bhai were bowling in 2003 when I saw my first World Cup. I really liked watching them... I’d copy them. And I kept working and working at it and I got good. And it’s helped me get picked.” Jan is the latest in a proud line of Pakistani innovators — from Hanif Mohammad, who invented the reverse-sweep, to Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz who were the first to unveil the dark arts of ‘reverse swing’.
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