Following a thrashing in the first Test at Cape Town during the tour of South Africa in 2007, Pakistan’s pace attack started the second Test, at Port Elizabeth, all cylinders firing.

Shoaib Akthar made another return to international cricket. The South African batting order bore the brunt of Akhtar’s fury combined with leg-break bowler Danish Kaneria’s skill to send the whole batting order packing in just two sessions. In the pre-day analysis of the second day on SuperSport, South African commentator Jeremy Federicks termed Shoaib as the “last fast bowler in the streamline that succeeded Imran, Wasim and Waqar.” Well, in his dreams!

There are rows of Pakistani pace bowlers just waiting in the shadows to display their talent to the world. In the next innings of the same match, Mohammad Asif, produced one of his most gripping spells to take Pakistan to a rare victory in the Rainbow Nation. With immaculate control and relentless persistence, Asif troubled everyone in relatively helpless conditions. The roughing up of the well-settled Jacques Kallis and Herschelle Gibbs before leaving them both ‘dead’ in front of the stumps was a rare show of unwavering patience combined with scintillating skill with the leather from a fast bowler.

Fast-forward to present times. Another tour of South Africa is under way. Pakistan’s pace attack has gone through a lot in the last six years. The country has moved on from Shoaib Akhtar, the match winner, and Mohammad Asif. Shoaib’s last hurrah in Test cricket, in fact, was the Port Elizabeth Test.

Sohail Tanvir’s bursting on the scenes with a rollicking yorker to rip apart Jayasuriya’s stumps in the inaugural World Twenty20 in 2007 has literally opened the flood gates of left-arm fast bowlers hailing from Pakistan, all of whom idolise the genius Wasim Akram.

Though, Sohail Tanvir did not live up to the promise with which he kicked off his career. Umar Gul bloomed into the first choice of selectors after being on the fringes for a while. Mohammad Amir, the teenage wonder boy, was well on his way to greatness until he got caught in the ugly spot-fixing scandal in 2010. It was unquestionably a big loss for Pakistan cricket.

Still, Pakistan might pull out another Amir but we most probably wouldn’t get another Asif. As a cricketing nation we simply don’t have either the culture or the temperament to produce Asifs. Asif was the best new ball bowler Pakistan produced, which is not a small compliment considering Pakistan had no mugs in the bowling arsenal.

After the fixing saga, Pakistan cricket effectively started from scratch. Easing out the wrinkles of that devastating tour required plenty of ironing out. But as we say “When God closes one door, He opens another.”

Pakistan found new ways of winning matches in the absence of fast bowlers. Our spinners suffocated the batsmen by drying up runs before launching their deadly assaults. Saeed Ajmal became a new hero of the Pakistani folklore of glittering bowling legacies. Mohammad Hafeez, Shahid Afridi and Abdur Rehman stood up to shape up one of the best spin bowling attacks of the modern era.

But despite all the victories, there were still concerns among the fans of the game here about the lack of fast bowlers. There is always an unquenchable thirst among the Pakistani cricket fans for cartwheeling stumps, toe-crushing yorkers and head pounding bouncers, a thirst that arose with the passing of each day.

And Pakistan, prompted by two bitter lessons of using spin against the Indian batsmen in the Asia Cup and the World T20, all of a sudden, put together a pace attack for the recent tour of India. And what an astonishing pace attack, it turned out to be. In a way, it was an ideal combination — Mohammad Irfan, with his height, pushed the Indians on the backfoot and Junaid Khan inviting them to hit high took care of the rest. Together both formed a lethal new-ball pair.

Junaid’s prodigious swing combined with the pace makes a destructive impact. The combination of pace and swing is always too hot to handle. Personally, I believe that Junaid, in this short stint, is an impoved version of Amir. Amir appeared a bit mellow on the docile Asian wickets but Junaid has absolutely bowled his heart out, his spells in Abu Dhabi and Galle are a perfect elaboration of that. Amir got the fans jumping in their seats in New Zealand, Australia and England but Junaid has emulated that to some extent on the road-like tracks of UAE and Sri Lanka.

Irfan might not have much to show as far as his figures are concerned but he helped Junaid pick wickets. What Irfan does is simply making the ball talk. On flat wickets, he made the ball roar up like a spiting cobra going for the prey. Watching him at times it appears as if we are back in the 1970s and ’80s, relishing Joel Garner’s bowling. Irfan’s working over of Yuvraj Singh in the second T20 in India was as good a masterpiece of pace bowling as one could dream of.

Such was the domination of the two that at times it appeared that the leader of the pack, Umar Gul, was playing second fiddle to Junaid and Irfan.

It was so refreshing for sore eyes to see the resurgence of pace in Pakistan cricket after an overdose of spin. The South African tour brings a chance for Junaid to enhance his reputation in comparison to Amir. Irfan must be licking his lips imagining the bounce in the Rainbow Nation. Leaving all the fitness questions aside, the big boy has really earned his seat for the trip, making the ball bounce like ping pong on the clawless Indian wickets was a staggering accomplishment. Leaving him out was never a good idea.

Umar Gul, too, has an opportunity to improve on his obnoxious 34-run average per wicket record in Test cricket. He is a much better bowler than the statistics suggest but early on in his spells in both innings, he bowls a little too short.

Ehsan Adil is another rookie fast bowler emerging from Pakistan, who is about to take the cricketing world by storm. The young fellow is known to extract a lot of bounce from goodish length due to his height.

And with the gifted bunch of young pacers of the likes of Sadaf Hussain, Wahab Raiz, Mohammad Talha, Asad Ali and Zia-ul-Haq also in line, Pakistan’s pace attack has a bright future. The tsunami of fast bowlers that Imran erupted in the mid 1970s is still pretty vigorous and the legacies of Wasim, Waqar and Shoaib are far from over.