Hammad Shakil
The Professor of Pakistan cricket team Mohammad Hafeez has been around for a while now, and is the most experienced member of his team after Shoaib Malik. Here we dissect his ODI numbers, and get to know how has he improved himself dramatically after doing almost nothing in the first half of his career.
It’s been 13 years since he made his debut for Pakistan, and has played 175 ODIs till date. We divide his career into two halves, first half being from 2003-2010, and the other half from 2010 till 2016. In the first half, Hafeez played just 48 ODIs while the last 6 years have seen him play 127 ODIs, more than any other Pakistani player in this period. Previously he was dropped more than being selected, while in the last 6 years, this ratio has also been inverted in his favour.
Mohammad Hafeez debuted in 2003 vs Zimbabwe in the Cherry Blossom Sharjah Cup, Sharjah, and couldn’t score more than 12 on his debut, but made a slow but composed 50 vs Sri Lanka in his fifth game. He scored rather inconsistently over the next few matches, made 3 fifties in his first 10 innings, but also scored 2 ducks in these 10 innings. His strike rate was a main issue then, as his first 3 fifties accumulated for 172 runs off 329 balls. He played 22 ODIs in 2003, and scored just 419 runs at an average of 19.04 and a strike rate of 51.60. He didn’t play a game in 2004 and made a comeback in the VB tri series in Australia in Jan-Feb 2005 featuring Pakistan, Australia and the West Indies. Again he couldn’t justify his potentials and scored just 124 runs in 8 games (@15.50, 51.45) he played in 2005. He was consequently picked and dropped till he was permanently dropped in 2007 after 48 games scoring just 874 runs (@18.59, 58.15) with no centuries and just 4 fifties to his name.
The Professor made his comeback after 3 years in Pakistan’s notoriously famous tour of England 2010 as a replacement for Salman Butt in the ODI series that succeeded the darkest Test series Pakistan had ever played.
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Hafeez attempting a big shot against India in a T20I in 2012 |
Since 2010, Mohammad Hafeez has played 127 games and scored 4482 runs at a strike rate of around 80 and an average of almost 38 (79.46 and 37.98). In this period, Pakistan have played 140 games, which means Hafeez has not missed out on many occasions, as he has played 91% of these games. The only major tournament or series he missed is the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, due to an injury. Also he is the 6th highest scorer in ODIs since 2010 behind V Kohli, K Sangakkara, TM Dilshan, AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla.
In the last 6 years, Mohammad Hafeez has scored 11 centuries which are itself a record (second highest number of centuries for Pakistan after Saeed Anwar’s 20). Only six players have scored more centuries than Hafeez in these years. He also has scored 24 fifties thus crossing the 50 mark 35 times i.e. a fifty plus score after every 3.63 innings. Apart from that, he has earned the MoM award on 14 occasions (most for Pakistan in this period) and 4 MoS awards.
In these years, he also has won most number of MoM awards in limited overs (ODIs and T20Is) where India’s Virat Kohli comes second on this list.
He also has managed to boost his average up from 18.59 to 32.46 while his strike rate has also continuously gone up from 58.15 to 74.98. Quite an evolution this, isn’t it?
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