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| December 3, 2005 | Saturday | Shawwal 30, 1426 |
Inzy 14th member of 8,000-run Test club
KARACHI, Dec 2: Pakistan skipper Inzamamul Haq celebrated another milestone in his already glittering career on Friday by becoming only the 14th player in Test cricket history to reach the coveted landmark of 8,000 runs.
The 35-year-old, who was forced to retire hurt on Wednesday with a forearm injury after making 35, became only the second Pakistani in the 8,000-run club with a six off off-spinner Shaun Udal during his innings of 97 in the third and final Test against England at Lahore’s Qadhafi Stadium.
Hitherto, the legendary Javed Miandad was the sole Pakistani in this exclusive club of batsmen which also features four Englishmen (Graham Gooch, Alec Stewart, David Gower and Geoff Boycott), three West Indians (Brian Lara, Viv Richards and Gary Sobers), three Australians (Allan Border, Steve and Mark Waugh) and two Indians (Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar).
Only last week Lara became Test cricket’s leading run-getter when he scored 226 against Australia at Adelaide, usurping Border’s 12-year-old world record of 11,174 runs. The little West Indian left-hander has so far accumulated 11,214 runs.
Inzamam, who came into this Test with 7955 runs, is now 12th in the all-time list of leading run-getters with 8,052 in 105 Tests.
Inzamam also achieved the rare feat of 1,000 in the calendar year on Friday for the second time in his 13-year-old Test career, having done the same in the year 2000. Apart from the burly right-hander, only Mohsin Khan is the only Pakistani to have scored 1,000 runs in the year 1982.
It was not only Inzamam who hogged the limelight on Friday. Overnight pair of Mohammad Yousuf and Kamran Akmal set a new Pakistan record for the sixth-wicket partnership.
The mammoth 269-run stand between Yousuf and Kamran improved upon the 217-run sixth-wicket partnership which was set in 1964-65 by Majid Khan and Hanif Mohammad against New Zealand on the same ground.
Had Yousuf and Kamran added another 13 runs, it would become the best partnership for any wicket at Qadhafi Stadium. The record still stands in the names of Miandad and Asif Iqbal who put on 281 for the fifth-wicket against New Zealand in Miandad’s debut Test in 1976-77.
Yousuf, who had previously made two double centuries — 203 v New Zealand at Christchurch in 2000-01 and 204 not out versus Bangladesh at Chittagong in 2001-02 — under his former name of Yousuf Youhana, scored only the sixth multiple hundred for Pakistan against England.
Zaheer Abbas has the distinction of making two such scores (274 at Edgbaston in 1971 and 240 at The Oval in 1974). The other Pakistanis in this group are Mohsin Khan (200 at Lord’s in 1982), Miandad (260 at The Oval in 1987) and Aamir Sohail (205 at Old Trafford in 1992).
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