Cricket: Aamer aims to speed up by bulking up

Mohammed Aamer beat Wasim Akram's record. Photo / Getty Images

He's the youngest bowler ever to pick up a five-wicket haul in test cricket - and he hasn't even grown up yet.

The 17-year-old Pakistan quick Mohammed Aamer was impressive enough against the Black Caps but it was his work against Australia in the Boxing Day test - five for 79 on a batsman's track - that really made the cricket world notice a much-loved phenomenon: a new, truly fast bowler.

But the man who will be an influence in the second test against Australia today hasn't even matured yet.

"Look at my shoulders and wrists," Aamer told reporters in Australia who queried his age. "[I am] A young, little boy. Maybe I will get faster as I get older."

There doesn't seem much doubt about it. Pakistan fast bowling coach and former great Waqar Younis says the blistering left-armer reminds him of himself when he was in his pomp.

"He can bowl quick, he's got good rhythm, he's got things going for him. He'll learn more over time. He needs about a year or two and he'll be a real threat," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Waqar as saying.

Waqar, however, said Aamer needs more flesh on his body - then he could spell trouble for the world's best batsmen.

"He should keep himself fit, which is very important. He is very skinny. I think he needs some meat on him and once he gets stronger, I think he can go a long way, certainly."

Yet it is Waqar's paceman team-mate Wasim Akram who discovered and inspired the young paceman who bowled several deliveries at 152km/h in Melbourne. Wasim was the hero of a young Aamer who started developing his love of cricket when aged six.

He has been developing his body to withstand the demands of cricket on a naturally lean and perhaps frail body. He has already suffered from the bane of fast bowlers - stress fractures - when overbowled at a youth tournament and had to leave another when a mosquito bite produced dengue fever; no joking matter.

However, since his startling international debut at the World Twenty20, Aamer has already bulked up after Waqar, Akram and others advised him to put on some weight. He has worked with David Dwyer, Pakistan's Australian trainer, to put on some muscle and that is thought to be behind the extra pace he produced at the MCG on a benign surface.

"Maybe my pace has increased," Aamer said. "It happens sometimes when the more you play, the more your arm gets used to the load and the looser it gets.

"Maybe it also has to do with the fact that it is a big series and I am striving harder. I don't really feel it that I am bowling faster but the speeds are there.

"I have built up my body a little. I've worked hard with DD [David Dwyer] on it and have increased my weight from 72kg to 75kg. I've added a bit of muscle to it.

"If we have rest days between matches, maybe four to five days, then I spend time in the gym, but in back-to-back tests, that is difficult to do. On any day off, we work to whatever plan DD gives us."

Aamer hails from a frontier town in the dangerous northwest province of Pakistan and had to catch a donkey cart to a nearby village where a car would take him to training.

He does not come from a wealthy background and, as a youngster, had to use his broken school clipboard as a bat and a taped ball as his bowling weapon.

Discovered by Akram as a 15-year-old, Aamer says that Wasim was his idol and they worked three or four times together at a bowling camp where the master of swing taught him "inswing and the use of crease", while Waqar and assistant coach Aaqib Javed worked with him on reverse swing.

The stress fractures on the 2007 tour of England put him out of the game for nine months and the dengue fever another two. But if his body has grown strong enough to withstand the amount - and the speed - he likes to bowl, he could have a rich career ahead.

He has already beaten Wasim out of one record. Wasim, who took 414 test wickets in a fine career that spanned 17 years, was 18 years and 251 days when he went on his first five-wicket test spree, in 1985 against New Zealand in Dunedin.

Aamer was 17 years and 157 days when he savoured his five-wicket haul at the MCG.

Coincidence? Probably not.

- Agencies