Cricket is currently suffering from a severe case of feature creep.
We’re obsessed with the multi-hyphenate. The "all-rounder" is the cricket equivalent of a smartphone that tries to be a professional camera, a gaming console, and a laser level all at once. Usually, it just ends up being a lukewarm slab of glass that drains its battery by noon.
Enter Hardik Pandya and Shivam Dube. They are the high-end, VC-funded hardware of the modern Indian game. They come with massive price tags, sleek marketing campaigns, and a level of swagger that suggests they’ve cracked the code of the sport. But during their recent bowling "horror show"—a term that feels almost too generous for the buffet of short balls and gentle medium-pace they served up—the system crashed. Hard.
Shoaib Akhtar, a man whose knees are held together by sheer spite and surgical tape, wasn't about to let the glitch slide. He took to the digital airwaves to remind everyone that just because you’re wearing the kit doesn't mean you’ve earned the legacy. His verdict was a blunt force instrument: "They aren't Malcolm Marshall."
It’s a brutal comparison. It’s also entirely necessary.
Marshall was a specialist. He was a terrifying, compact engine of pure pace who could dismantle a batting lineup with a flick of the wrist. He didn't have a lifestyle brand. He had a bouncer that could rearrange your dental work. By contrast, Pandya and Dube often feel like they’re playing a simulation of fast bowling. They run in, they strike a pose, they release the ball at 130 clicks, and then they watch it disappear over the mid-wicket boundary for six.
The friction here isn't just about bad stats. It’s about the cost of mediocrity. In the high-stakes economy of T20 cricket, these "hybrid" players are the most expensive assets on the board. Pandya, specifically, has become a lightning rod for this frustration. Whether it’s the $1.8 million salary or the captaincy drama that follows him like a lost dog, the expectations are sky-high. When you’re paid like a game-changer, you aren't allowed to bowl like a net-filler.
Dube is a different kind of problem. He’s the "budget" version of the dream—a guy picked for his ability to clear the ropes who is then asked to chip in with the ball to "balance" the side. But "balance" is a corporate myth. You don’t balance a team by adding four overs of predictable, military-medium trundling that lets the opposition get their eye in. You balance a team by having someone who can actually take a wicket.
Akhtar’s critique hits a nerve because it exposes the fraud of the modern "bits and pieces" era. We’ve traded raw, specialized skill for versatility that doesn't actually work under pressure. It’s the classic tech trade-off: we gave up the headphone jack for a thinner phone, and now we’re all carrying around dongles just to hear the music.
Watching Pandya and Dube get taken apart wasn't just a bad day at the office. It was a failure of the "all-rounder" philosophy. When the pitch offers nothing and the batter is swinging for the hills, you need a specialist's craft. You need a yorker that lands on a dime or a change of pace that actually deceives. You don’t need a guy who looks great in a 4K slow-motion replay but gives up 24 runs in the 17th over.
The Rawalpindi Express doesn't care about your brand deals or your Instagram followers. He remembers a time when fast bowling was an act of violence, not a tactical box to be checked. He’s looking at a generation of players who have been told they can be everything to everyone, only to realize they’re becoming nothing to nobody.
We keep chasing the mythical "next big thing," hoping to find the player who can do it all. We want the device that replaces the laptop, the camera, and the car keys. But as Akhtar pointed out, while we were busy looking for the next Malcolm Marshall in a pair of luxury sneakers, we forgot that the original didn't need a marketing team to tell you he was dangerous.
If the current crop of all-rounders is the future of the game, why does the past look so much more reliable?