Umar Gul

Umar Gul is a professional Pakistani cricketer who plays for the Pakistan national cricket team. He is mainly a right arm fast medium pace bowler and down the order right handed batsman. Gul is a specialist fast bowler who is well known for his change of pace.

In April 2003 Gul played for the first time for the team and took part in the Cherry Blosssom Sharjah Cup where he played four one-day matches against Sri Lanka, Kenya and Zimbabwe and took 4 wickets. In the 2003-04 home series against Bangladesh Gul played in the entire series and in 3 Tests took 15 wickets and was the second ranked Pakistani bowler behind Shabbir Ahmed who took 17 wickets.

In the One day international series against Bangladesh Gul took 11 wickets in a 5-0 series win. In the next test series against India Gul replaced Shabbir Ahmed in the second test. Gul started to bowl as a first change bowler and in only the second over dismissed Virender Sehwag. Further he bowled unaltered for 12 overs on both the sides of the lunch break and dismissed five Indian batsmen including including Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid whose Test batting averages were above 50. During his spell Gul had figures of 5 for 31 and he became the Man of the Match although he conceded five runs an over in the second innings. Dileep Premchandran the CricInfo journalist praised his “ control of line and length.”

In the Twenty20 Cup in 2004-05 Gul participated in some matches for Pakistan XI and Pakistan A which were the warm-up matches prior to the Test matches against England. However Gul was not chosen for these Tests and played in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy with Peshawar.
Gul signed with the Indian Premier League in 2008 and was included in the Kolkata franchise of ShahRukh Khan for 150000 USD.

Major achievements

In Gul’s debut test series against India he was awarded as the Man of the Match for his 5 wickets giving 31 runs.