When Salman Butt played an unbeated innings of 129 against India in the Finals of Kitply Cup, he also completed his 2000 runs in ODIs. While Salman’s innings saw Pakistan lift the tournament trophy, he became the 19th Pakistani to reach 2000 runs milestone in ODIs. It is generally said about ODIs that after playing 50 ODIs every good batsman gets an average in 30s but only greats get it past 40. Salman Butt has got his average to 40.54 after 52 innings. Will he able to hold on or better his average? or will he slid back to an average of 30s? We will have to wait and see. His career has already seen few ups and downs. He made his debut with a duck against West Indies in 2004 but in the same season he came back with a match-winning century against India but then slid down to a brief oblivion. He was not part of Pakistan’s team in 2007 World Cup but saw a reversal of his luck when he became Vice Captain of Pakistan team soon after that. In the past year or so he has come back to form again and has been scoring consistently in all forms of cricket.
The complete and updated (as of June 15, 2008) list of Pakistanis who have scored 2000 or more runs in ODI is as follows.
1. Inzamam-ul-Haq 11739 runs at an average of 39.52
2. Muhammad Yousuf 9144 runs at 43.54
3. Saeed Anwar 8823 runs at 39.21
4. Javed Miandad 7381 runs at 41.7
5. Saleem Malik 7170 runs at 32.88
6. Ijaz Ahmed 6564 runs at 32.33
7. Rameez Raja 5841 runs at 32.09
8. Shahid Afridi 5466 runs at 23.76
9. Younis Khan 4791 runs at 32.59
10. Aamer Sohail 4780 runs at 31.86
11. Abdul Razzak 4416 at 30.24
12. Shoaib Malik 4364 at 34.63
13. Waseem Akram 3717 runs at 16.52
14. Imran Khan 3709 runs at 33.41
15. Moin Khan 3266 runs at 23.00
16. Mudassar Nazar 2653 runs at 25.26
17. Zaheer Abbas 2572 runs at 47.62
18. Yasir Hameed 2028 runs at 36.87
19. Salman Butt 2027 runs at 40.54
I always liked his batting style, maybe because I am biased towards the left handed batsmen. One thing that he must get over is his shaky starts . Once he gets going he is a pleasure to watch
I hope he cements his place with great performances. Now the big job is to find him a stable partner who can lead the batting line for years to come.
Salman Butt has huge potential that needs to be nurtured. People tend to forget that players don’t operate in a vacuum and are affected by the performances of others in their team. Unfortunately, Butt has had a very ordinary opening partner in Akmal and the other players down the order are quite erratic as well. Perhaps one reason why Saeed Anwar, Inzamam, etc played so well was that they were backed up by the likes of Wasim and Waqar on the bowling side; that must have given them an extra boost of confidence to keep going.
The current Pakistani team is, sadly, light years behind what it was during the nineties. However, in the match against India, the same sub-par team showed flashes of brilliance under great pressure; Butt’s confidence during the later part of the innings was palpable. Another thing I like about him is that although he is one of the younger members of the team, he has a serious head on his shoulders.
Even though Salman Butt has disappointed for not living up to some of our expectations, but in general he has been a good contributor and become an important part of the team. He failed in Twenty20 world cup, but at the same time has played quite a few match winning innings in important ODIs and some cup finals. He also preformed well in test matches, but in Pakistan and abroad. Most folks compared him to Saeed Anwar when he arrived, which is unfair for any young player. I wish Salman Butt best of luck and more success.
He is getting better. Pair him with Jamshed Nasir on a regular basis and see Pakistan have an opening pair that we can all be proud of.
Salman, is as unpredictable as Pakistani team, usually cannot score in big games, I hope that will change soon.