There is only one bowler in the 300-wicket club who averages under 30 against every opposition and in every country. He is a Pakistani, and he is not Wasim Akram or Waqar Younis. Imran Khan turns 74 today, and he is the greatest Test bowler this country has ever produced. You might be scratching your head, wondering how I could lean towards Imran over Wasim, Waqar and Fazal. I could be slightly biased here, but I have the credits to claim it. He is the only Pakistani fast bowler with more than five ten-wicket hauls. His career average, strike rate and economy rate are all better than Wasim Akram's. Richard Hadlee gets a lot of credit for being a lone warrior, but Imran's support bowlers were very similar to Chatfield, Snedden and Cairns. And over the course of his career Imran had to bowl more overs per innings than Wasim or Waqar. Now look at what he did anyway, in Tests between 1982 and 1989. With the bat: 54 innings, 1,971 runs, an average of 49.27. Only five players in the world scored more runs at a better average in that period: Miandad, Border, Viv Richards, Dean Jones and Vengsarkar. With the ball: 43 matches, 210 wickets, an average of 18.76. No bowler on earth picked up more wickets at a better average in those years. Across his career he averaged 37 with the bat and 22 with the ball, which makes him arguably the most balanced cricketer the game has had. And in his last ten years of international cricket, across 51 Tests, his batting average exceeded 50 while he averaged 19 with the ball. That made him perhaps the only all-rounder after Sir Garfield Sobers who could have merited a place in the side with either one of his skills. So Imran Khan the fast bowler is short-changed. There is nothing between him and Wasim as far as their bowling is concerned. If being more watchable makes you a great bowler, then Jimmy Anderson ought to be rated ahead of McGrath and Ambrose. Imran was unparalleled.