KEY POINTS
- Munaf Patel praises Akhtar for consistently bowling at 150 km/h for 15 years despite severe knee injuries.
- Akhtar’s legendary pace, including his 161.3 km/h world record, remains unmatched in cricket history.
- Indian greats like Sehwag, Sidhu, and Kohli have also lauded Akhtar’s ferocious speed and impact.
ISLAMABAD: In the world of cricket, where rivalries run deep and passions often overshadow praise, admiration from across the border becomes more than just a compliment; it becomes a tribute.
A former Indian fast bowler Munaf Patel offered just that, openly applauding the legendary Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akhtar for what he called an “unthinkable” feat: consistently bowling at 150 km/h for 15 years, despite battling with damaged knees.
In a recent interview, Munaf spoke with both awe and respect, calling Shoaib’s career not just long but driven by madness.
“You need to be mad about cricket to go through what he did,” Munaf said, acknowledging that Akhtar’s passion outpaced even his own punishing speed. For a bowler whose body was breaking down, Akhtar’s will to keep tearing through opposition line-ups became the stuff of folklore.
Indeed, Shoaib Akhtar, widely known as the “Rawalpindi Express,” still holds the record for the fastest delivery in cricket history, 161.3 km/h, a record that remains untouched in a sport where speed is often feared and rarely mastered.
The roar of the crowd, the fear in the batter’s eyes, and the thud of the ball hitting the pads or the stumps, all were part of the Shoaib Akhtar experience.
Munaf’s tribute is the latest in a long line of Indian voices that have saluted the legendary pacer in the recent past.
Virender Sehwag, known for his fearless batting, once admitted, “The ball would come so fast from Shoaib that we couldn’t even tell where it hit.”
Navjot Singh Sidhu, never short on poetic flair, compared Shoaib’s thunderbolts to trains speeding across railway tracks, “His ball passes like a train over iron rails,” he said. Even modern-day great Virat Kohli has expressed his admiration for Akhtar’s fierce presence on the pitch.
But Akhtar is not just a relic of the past. This year, during the Asia Cup 2025 final, which saw Pakistan fall to India, Akhtar turned his sharp eye to the present.
Speaking on a media platform, the former speedster didn’t hold back in his analysis of Pakistan’s defeat.
He highlighted the poor performance of the middle order and criticized the team’s selection for not including Hasan Nawaz and another pace option.
“They had the start,” he said, “but couldn’t capitalize. A target of 170 or 175 was possible.”
For Akhtar, passion never stops at the boundary line. Whether he’s on the field or in the studio, he remains a force, an untamed voice, as fast and fierce as his bowling once was.
From breaking bats to breaking boundaries of rivalry, Shoaib Akhtar’s legacy continues to race on, fuelled not just by speed, but by the rarest of qualities in sport: respect that runs deeper than any scoreboard.
