Name: Wahab Riaz

Birth date: 1985-06-28

Hometown: Lahore

Teams: Pakistan, Hyderabad (Pakistan), Hyderabad Hawks, Lahore, Lahore Lions, Lahore Ravi, Punjab, National Bank of Pakistan

Debut: February 2, 2008

ODI Best: 3 | 3-22

Test Best: 27 | 5/63

 

 

A stocky left arm fast medium bowler who has represented Pakistan in 5 one day internationals. 4 of the 5 matches he has played in have been against ether Zimbabwe or Bangladesh but his first real test came against India where he had a bit of a nightmare and was carted around in his 9.2 pvers before being removed from the attack for bowling 2 beamers.

Wahab is a bowler who is still learning the game and steadily improving. He has the ability to bowl some pretty sharp deliveries in the mid 140kph and generally seams the ball rather than swinging it. Wahab also bowls a fine bouncer and with experience will improve. He had a fine match in the recently concluded Pentangular trophy final versus Federal Areas when he was playing for Punjab, taking 5 wickets for 44 runs.

Wahab's future at international level depends a lot on his rate of improvement and the injury situation and general fitness of bowlers like Umer Gul, Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Aamer, etc.

Wahab was selected for Pakistan tour of England where he sat out in first 4 games, however, as time went Umar Gul got injured during the series which made way for Wahab. In his first test appearance Wahab took 5 wickets and conceded 63 runs in 18 overs. In his first test match Wahab showed brilliant performance by swinging the ball both ways at a sharp pace which caused trouble for English batsman.

As his name propped up constantly in the spot-fixing court case taking place in England during 2011, he was subsequently dropped from the team until further notice. This led to him being on the outside looking in despite performing well.