When we talk of allrounders of the game , we come across some of the great names in world cricket that have ruled world cricket across eras from the great Gary Sobers to Jacques Kallis . However cricket had the four most exciting allrounders in the 1980s who used to win matches on their own. Ian Botham, Kapil Dev , Richard Hadlee and Inran Khan took the game to a different level with their exploits. All of them were fine fast bowlers and belligerent batters .
Imran Khan of Pakistan , who made his debut in 1973 , took time to develop his allround and bowling skills but once he realised his potential in 1977 Sydney test in which he took 12 wickets by bowling extremely quick , he never looked back .
It was mostly as a fast bowler of high pace that Imran Khan really made his mark and often his batting took a backseat but later he really upskilled his batting and became a highly responsible batter who could hit the ball really long . However Imran was a fast bowler first and his hostile spells are a part of Pakistan’s cricket folklore .
Imran had a great inswinger at pace with which he took bagful of wickets on unresponsive subcontinent pitches while he used the swing to great effect in English conditions . Imran was an all conditions quick and his pace and hostility was at different times tough to handle by the greatest of batters as India found out in the 6 test series in Pakistan in 1982-83 when he took 40 wickets to decimate the high quality Indian batting .
A world cup winner in 1992 as captain , Imran had a glittering career spanning nearly 20 years ( there were a few breaks due to injury & some self inflicted breaks ) . He took 362 test wickets at 23 average with 23 fifers and scored 3807 runs at a healthy 37 average with 6 hundreds in 88 tests . In 175 ODIs Khan took 182 wickets at 3.89 economy and 26 average and scored 3709 runs at 33 average . In total Imran took 1287 first class wickets and scored more than 17000 first class runs .
In the below video , Imran Khan is seen setting up Greg Chappell in a test match in Australia with pace and tried to put him on the backfoot with short ball and then finally slipping in a full yorker length delivery to clean bowl the master batsman . Fast bowling skills at its finest .