Wisden overview
Cricket has Abdul Qadir to thank for keeping wrist-spin alive through the darkest years of the late 1970s and '80s. He did it with style, too. Blessed with a fast bowler's temperament and fire, he surrounded his craft with mystique, and after his retirement cultivated the long hair and looks of a rock star. It is impossible to believe that wrist-spin has ever been bowled better than Qadir did in his home city of Lahore in 1987-88, when he took 9 for 56 against England. Graham Gooch, who faced him that day, said Qadir was even finer than Shane Warne, to whom he passed on the candle. Scyld Berry

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