Irfan Pathan: India’s Left-Arm Quick Who Faced Pakistan
In early 2003, India thought it had found its own Wasim Akram.
A 19-year-old left-arm quick with a whippy action and a natural feel for reverse swing landed in Australia and Pakistan and tore into some of the best batting line-ups in the world. Irfan Pathan’s Test debut came at the SCG, and he announced himself with the ball in hand and a swagger that belied his age. Steve Waugh, in his farewell series, was one of his first victims. Adam Gilchrist, so often the destroyer, was beaten by a reverse-swinging yorker that seemed to bend the laws of physics and timing.
The numbers from that tour and what followed in Pakistan still read like the start of a fairytale. Sixteen wickets from 10 games in the ODI tri-series in Australia. Eight wickets from three matches on the cauldron-like grounds of Pakistan. With Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra already in the mix, Pathan’s arrival completed a left-arm pace battery India had never truly possessed. The comparisons with Akram were instant and relentless. Same side-on action. Same angle. Same late movement. And crucially, that ability to make the old ball talk.
Pathan leaned into the comparison rather than shrink from it. He sought Akram out, studied him, and tried to understand the art from the master himself.
Akram’s first impression of Pathan
Wasim Akram still remembers the first proper conversation.
“Irfan met me in 2004 on his first tour to Australia, I was commentating for ESPNStar. He was a big fan. Grew up watching us,” Akram said on the 1 Mint podcast, recalling the moment a young Indian left-armer came looking for guidance.
Akram offered what he could. The technical details were already largely in place. Pathan had done the hard yards to reach international cricket. What Akram focused on was the layer above the mechanics.
“I gave him a few tips here and there, but he did well early on in his career. His action was similar to mine from the very beginning. But when players ask you about something, what you tell them is mostly about the mindset,” Akram explained. “Action and all is fine, because at that stage, you have reached that level where you’re representing the country. Things like wrist position and how to suss out a batsman. When to use variations, when not to.”
It was the kind of counsel that shaped an entire generation of fast bowlers. For Pathan, it helped sharpen an already lethal new-ball spell. He went on to share the new ball for India for several years, often swinging it both ways in the first over, often turning games in those first 20 minutes.
The arc, though, never quite matched the promise. Injuries crept in. A new, faster, more robust crop of Indian quicks emerged. The player who once looked like India’s long-term spearhead slowly slipped out of the XI, then out of the squad, and eventually out of the selectors’ plans.
By the time Pathan announced his retirement in 2020, his greatest international moment – Player of the Match in the T20 World Cup final win over Pakistan in 2007 – already belonged to a different era of Indian cricket. Yet his voice never left the stage.
Pathan reinvented himself behind the microphone and on social media, where he remains one of the most outspoken former India players. He is sharp, emotional, and unafraid to wade into the storm, especially when the subject is Pakistan.
“Irfan is a good boy; he still keeps meeting me,” Akram said with a smile. “It’s a different thing that he keeps tweeting some or the other thing against Pakistan. But our fans are ready too. They don’t have the tendency to ignore either. They just have to reply.”
A bowler who thrived on the rivalry
On the field, Pathan thrived on that rivalry long before it shifted to timelines and hashtags.
Against Pakistan, he collected 67 wickets from 36 internationals – 27 in Tests, 34 in ODIs, six in T20Is. Those numbers sit behind some of the most vivid snapshots of his career: the early breakthroughs, the swing, the roar, the sense that India finally had a left-arm quick who relished the biggest stage.
For Akram, who lived through the peak of India–Pakistan cricket, none of this intensity is new. What has changed is the amplifier. Social media has turned every ball, every quote, every tweet into a spark.
And he has little patience for the manufactured rage.
‘It’s only a frikkin game’
Akram has played in World Cups, in Sharjah epics, in high-pressure Tests that felt like they carried the weight of two nations. He knows the noise. He also knows its limits.
“People have too much time. Why can’t they understand? It’s only a frikkin game,” he said, cutting through the hysteria with trademark bluntness. “At the end of the day, it’s just a match. Somebody has to win, somebody has to lose. And move on to the next one.”
The rivalry, of course, is built on history and memory. Old wounds, old wins, old collapses. But Akram has no interest in dressing up sport as a proxy battlefield.
“But no, what happened many moons ago still lingers. Revenge and all is so 1970,” he added. “It’s the classic ‘an empty mind is a devil’s workshop, thought process.”
For a generation that grew up watching Akram and then Pathan swing the ball in opposite directions, the message is disarming in its simplicity. The contest that shaped them, defined them, and still fuels endless online arguments?
To the man at the centre of so many of those days, it remains what it always was: a cricket match. The rest is noise.
