Cricket not really a team game, asserts Akhtar

Trust Shoaib Akhtar to come up with interesting tid-bits, now and again. Just a day after he had pulled up former captain Inzamam-ul-Haq for not fully utilising his abilities, Akhtar was on song again, in another television interview, to NDTV.

Akhtar asserted that though everyone kept harping on the fact that cricket is a team game, he doesn't think so. The world's fastest bowler thinks that cricket is ultimately a game of individuals, and a few matter more than the team. The point Akhtar was trying to make was about the importance of match winners in a team: obviously, he considers himself to be one. It may not be the most diplomatic comment to make, and Shoaib has never really known to be one, but one can't but help see a point there: didn't Gilchrist almost single-handedly win Australia the World Cup final? Weren't Hayden, Ponting, Mc Grath and Shane Tait more important than the other Aussies?