He looks weak: Shoaib Akhtar weighs in on Hasan Ali's injury troubles

The injury troubles of right-arm pacer Hasan Ali has been up for debate since former Pakistan bowling coach Azhar Mahmood recently revealed that too much emphasis on gym training, by the current management, led to the pacer’s injury.

"Hasan didn’t get injured playing cricket. He got injured during training when the management made him deadlift around 130 to 140 kilograms (kg) of weight," Mahmood said. "I don’t mind weight training but you need to gradually build players. If someone has not deadlifted more than 100 kg before and you ask him to lift 130 kg, then obviously he will get injured. He got injured in the gym."

However, Pakistan current bowling coach Waqar Younis in a recent media interaction contradicted Mahmood’s claim.

"As far as I know, I don’t think any such thing [injury from excessive gym work] happened. Hasan Ali was injured while bowling. I don’t think we need to panic over his injury because fast-bowler tend to get injured," Waqar said.

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Former Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar has now also weighed in on the aforementioned issue and questioned the timing of Mahmood’s statement.

"Hasan got injured due to training as well as overwork. Plus, he played a lot of cricket for the past year or two and wasn’t managed properly," Akhtar said. "When I met him 25 days ago, I told him to do light and high repetition training so there is no stiffness and rigidness in his muscle. He is looking very weak and his shoulder is also very thin. He went through wrong training and was asked to lift heavy weight. The learning process of our cricketers is very slow because they do not know the anatomy of their body and how to do high repetition training."

"There was a bit mess up from everybody along with Hasan Ali. However, Azhar should have said all this when he was looking after him but I don’t understand why he is saying all this now," he added.

Hasan was ruled out of home Tests against Sri Lanka last year after CT scans revealed cortical rib fractures, involving ninth rib on the right side and eighth and ninth ribs on the left side.