Kevin Pietersen Names Zaheer Khan, Mohammed Asif in His List of Top 5 Bowlers

Former England skipper and arguably one of their best batsmen of all time, Kevin Pietersen named his five best bowlers of all time.

During an interview with the cricket.com.au. Pietersen named his five favourite bowlers of all time. There were three pacers and a couple of spinners on his list which had some serious names.

The first name he took is arguably the greatest spinner of all time, the legendary Shane Warne. He was the first bowler to bag 700 Test wickets and is undoubtedly the best wrist spinners of all time. The leggie dominated world cricket for almost a couple of decades.

The amount of turn he extracted even on pitches not conducive to the spinners set him apart from his peers.

In his debut Ashes series in England, Warne bowled arguably the greatest ball of the century when he castled Mike Gatting with a once in a lifetime delivery. The ball pitched well outside the leg stump and turned viciously to take the off stump.

Gatting was shell-shocked that how delivery can turn so much. He bowled a similar sort of delivery in his penultimate Ashes series when he castled Andrew Strauss with a ball which pitched way outside the off stump and went on disturb the middle and the leg stick.

The 2^nd bowler in Pietersen’s list was the willy fox Muttiah Muralitharan who is the leading wicket-taker in the longest format of the game. He was a sensational bowler for Sri Lanka, and though he had some issues with his action quite a few times in his career, he was always a champion bowler, and even Warne rated him pretty highly and had predicted him to take 1,000 Test wickets.

The 3^rd name which he took was the Pakistan fast bowler Mohammed Asif who was banned from playing any forms of cricket in 2010 due to his involvement in spot-fixing along with his teammates, Mohammad Amir and Salman Butt.

Asif was a sensational bowler for Pakistan albeit in a brief career. He could extract steep bounce from any pitches and was a find for the Asian country until his involvement in spot-fixing brought a premature end to his international career.

Pietersen’s 4^th name was his teammate and the leading wicket-taker of England in the longest format of the game, James Anderson. He is one of the best exponents of reverse swing and even in the twilight of his career he is still one of the best bets which England has. He is the only England bowler to bag more than 500 Test wickets and still has the potent and mettle to rock any star-studded batting line-up.

India’s Zaheer Khan was Pietersen’s 5^th name on the list. The left-arm pacer was one of the best pacers India had produced. He used to make batsmen look foolish even on dead Indian pitches and the way he bowled the reverse swing and made the ball talk was something exceptional. He made terrific use of the box and was one of the greatest exponents of reverse swing during his time.

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