'His face would go pale; don't think he ever lasted one full over against me': Saqlain's bunny in Team India
Saqlain Mushtaq's duels with Tendulkar, Azharuddin and Dravid were filled with intensity, but there was one batter whom the spinner used dismiss easily.
Long before Nathan Lyon, Ravichandran Ashwin, or Harbhajan Singh and Muttiah Muralitharan, Pakistan's Saqlain Mushtaq was the undisputed king of off-spin. Saqlain used to torment the opposition with his doosra, the delivery which he invented, and tasted an insurmountable amount of success during his time with the Pakistan team from 1995 to 2003. He was an equally effective bowled in both Tests and ODIs, with 208 and 288 wickets respectively and his battles against some of the toughest oppositions if his time such as Australia, India and Sri Lanka were mindboggling. In Test, Saqlain picked the most wickets against Sri Lanka (34) and Australia (30), followed by India (25). In ODIs, though, Saqlain's love affair against the Indian team was miles ahead of the rest as he picked 57 wickets from 36 matches against them.
His duels with Sachin Tendulkar, Mohammad Azharuddin and Rahul Dravid were filled with intensity. However, if there was one batter Saqlain enjoyed bowling to and found exceptionally easy to dismiss, it was Ajay Jadeja, whom he dismissed 6 times in ODIs. In fact, during an ODI series in 1997, Saqlain clean bowled Jadeja three times in three matches, making him his bunny.
"There was a time when Ajay Jadeja's face used to go pale upon seeing me bowl. I'm sure he never lasted one full over against me. He always got out and even told me. But all the other players - Sachin, Azharuddin, Ganguly, Dravid were dangerous batters. Very difficult," Saqlain said on The Nadir Ali podcast.
Among that star-studded batting line up of the 1990s and 2000s, Saqlain named Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid as the toughest to bowl to. Saqlain dismissed Dravid 3 times in Tests and Tendulkar twice in ODIs and thrice in Tests, but it wasn't before the Pakistan legend was pushed to his limits.
"Sachin and Dravid. I have gotten them both out but you have a play a long game. There is a difference between catching a rat and catching a tiger. These batter, you can't catch them like rate. I had to think for hours how to fox them, trap them and get them out. Sometimes I bowled 20 overs, and even them I couldn't. So it's not easy. In order to get the better of world-class batters, you have to broaden your thinking, show patience, and keep trying," added Saqlain.
