Anam Amin

Anam Amin is Pakistan’s current leading spinner who bowls left-arm orthodox. Born in a Lahore-based conservative family, Amin first started playing tape ball cricket and soon graduated to play at the professional level. A cool persona on the field, the spinner’s strength is to stick on her lines and lengths to fox the batters.

The spinner started her career by representing her college with Bismah Maroof and Sana Mir. Her breakthrough moment came while playing a friendly game against a boys’ team where she bowled 5 maidens in her 10-over quota to scalp four wickets, which led her into the Pakistan national team. 

A 21-year-old spinner was called for the tour of Bangladesh in 2014 where she made her ODI as well as T20I debut. Amin first played the 50-over format and bowled an extremely economical spell of 10-2-20-0. A couple of days later, she made it into the shortest format. She bagged a wicket of an on-song Fargana Hoque to finish the game with 1 for 19. 

After a dream debut, Amin played sensationally in the 2015-16 season where she bagged a handful of wickets against South Africa, Bangladesh, and West Indies to book her ticket for India to play the 2016 World T20. The spinner started the World Cup with two Player of the Match awards against West Indies and the host nation. Amin bagged four wickets against the former team and while she took 1-9 against India. Pakistan didn’t qualify for the knockout but the spinner ended the campaign on a high. 

Though Amin’s dip in form wasn’t so far away. Post the ICC event, she had under-par series against England and New Zealand that led her to miss the 50-over World Cup in 2017. However, her dip in the 50-over format didn’t affect her T20I performances. As the spinner emerged as Pakistan’s spin tycoon in 2017-18, she was named in the squad for the 20-over World Cup.

In 2018, she made an ODI comeback against Australia after a long gap of two years. The following year, she struggled to secure a berth in the ODI set up but her T20I numbers were staggering enough to bag a berth for the 2020 World Cup. 

Amin has the ability to tease the batters with her flighted deliveries and she proved herself over and over again. If Pakistan cricket uses Amin well, she has the potential to become a big-match player.

(As of April 2021)