The Pakistani pacer has created controversy by saying that he ended the former Indian opener- Gautam Gambhir’s white-ball career. Mohammad Irfan, a 7-feet and 1-inch bowler who comes from Karachi, Pakistan in an interview to a Pakistani news channel claimed this. He said that in the 2012 India-Pakistan series, the pacer could see that Gautam Gambhir could not face him and had troubles in playing against him.
Mohammad Irfan made his debut in the 2012 series against India. He said that as it was his debut and the world has had very few 7-feet pacers, it was very difficult for the Indian batsmen to pick him.
He said, “The Indian batsmen thought that he would bowl at 130-135 mph but he increased his pace to 145 mph. I could see this during the nets that the teams had together during that series. Gautam Gambhir would never have eye contact with me during practice and I could see he is not comfortable against me”.
Actually, during this phase, the left-handed batsman was going through a bad patch and could not score big runs. After this series, his England series also didn’t go well. Therefore he took retirement after the England series.
Gautam Gambhir’s Career
Gautam Gambhir is one of the best openers India ever produced. He single-handedly played the match-winning innings for India in both the world cup wins that India has produced (2007 T20 World Cup and 2011 ODI World Cup). As a batsman, Gambhir played 58 Test matches scoring 4,154 runs at an average of 42 and career-best of 206 runs. In One-day Internationals, Gambhir played 147 matches and went on to score 5,238 runs at an average of 40 and career-best being 150*.
So, undoubtedly Gautam Gambhir is one of the leading players of the games, while the Pakistani pacer since his debut could not even make an impact and has remained mostly out of the national side.