Iftikhar Anjum

Iftikhar Anjum Biography

Born on December 1, 1980 at Khanewal, Iftikhar Anjum is a skinny built right-arm Pakistani pacer who has been a prominent member of national team during his career.

He was also a veteran player in the domestic cricket having played for some prestigious teams within Pakistan like Zarai Taraqiati Bank, Team Islamabad and Agriculture Development Bank.

He has also played for English club, Surrey CCC.

With a bowling action similar to that of veteran Pakistani pacer - Aaqib Javed, and agile hopping run-up similar to Glenn McGrath, Iftikhar Anjum was one of the more prominent pacers of his time in Pakistan.

Background

Iftikhar started playing domestic cricket in 1999, when he was just 19 years old.

In 2004, Iftikhar led his team - ZTBL, to victory in the Patron's Trophy final against WAPDA, taking seven wickets in the first innings and finishing with ten at the end of the match.

He played a total of 142 First-class matches and 128 List-A matches, in which he claimed 523 and 159 wickets respectively.

Debut

He played his debut match against Zimbabwe in 2004. The team won the match by a huge margin of 144 runs but Iftikhar failed to impress, he turned out to be team’s most expensive bowler of the match. However, he took 1 wicket.

Anjum was strangely bench-marked as an ODI player throughout his career and he managed to get into playing XI for only one Test which was against Sri Lanka in Kandy in 2006.

Similar to his ODI debut, he failed to steal the show and finished the match as the most expensive bowler and went wicketless.

Rise to glory

Anjum’s presence gave a decent stability to the Pakistan’s pace battery at times. South Africa’s tour of Pakistan in 2007 gave his career a huge boost as he took 3 wickets, 3 times in the series.

He was also the part of Pakistani squad in the 2007 Cricket World Cup in which he played three games, and took five wickets.

His best analysis came in Pakistan’s tour of Sri Lanka in 2008, registering career best figures of 5/30.

Low points

Throughout his career, he was looked as a backup for the Pakistan's frontline pacers and was never guaranteed a permanent place in the team.

With the dominance of Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif, in the period of 2003-2007, chances for Iftikhar Anjum seemed to be few and far between from then on barring injury to any of these major players.

His inability to bowl at the death and being expensive at times were some other reasons of him remaining out of the playing XI.

Retirement

Iftikhar’s last assignment at the international level, was against Australia at Perth in 2010. Iftikhar dismissed Nathan Hauritz as his only wicket of the match.