Irfan Pathan was seen as the next big thing in Indian cricket when he made his Test debut as a 19-year old in Australia. In fact, he was seen as the most talented swing and seam bowler to emerge from India since the legendary Kapil Dev. The sight of an young Irfan destroying Pakistan’s top-order to claim a hat-trick in the very first over of the 2006 Karachi Test is a sight that will remained etched in every cricket fan’s mind for long. He was named by the International Cricket Council as the 2004 Emerging Player of the Year.
But as days passed, Irfan perhaps tried to copy Kapil more, thus emphasising more on his batting. And he did show promise with the bat and was motivated more by Greg Chappell who took over as India coach in 2005. Pathan improved his batting skills and tried to become a complete bowling all-rounder. He even opened the batting on occasions in ODIs and scored 93 in a Test match (10 Dec 2005, versus Sri Lanka in Delhi) while opening the innings. For the first few months, he did remarkably well and even rose to No. 2 in the ICC’s ODI rankings for all-rounders. He soon drew comparisons with Kapil Dev.
However, he perhaps prioritised his batting a bit too much and it soon affected his bowling. As the time wore on, he began to steadily lose pace and swing and found himself out of the team by the end of 2006.
Since then he made several comebacks to the team but never managed to cement his spot. His fall from grace was very remarkable and many feel that Greg Chappell was responsible behind it.
However, Irfan has always denied these allegations and did it again on Monday. He was conducting a Question and Answer session on Instagram where one fan asked him whether Chappell ruined his career and has he forgiven him. In reply, Pathan denied it and left a lot to imagination.
