Sami the enigmatic

Just what do you do with the boy Mohammad Sami? Drop him, say too many people. The rest say that he should have been dropped much earlier. As far as is recorded, only one person outside the team has actually backed him consistently, and that is none other than Imran Khan. Possibly, for confidence, his is the most important vote outside the team.

Perhaps everyone says it because of his record, which is little short of awful. Every time he runs in to bowl, he has to do so almost 79 more times before he strikes. Statistically, he is Ajit Agarkar's twin, almost identical, and not many complimentary things are said about him either. The pace of modern-day batting has quickened, and against his bowling it quickens even more. If he plays another 27 Tests in the same manner that he has played his first 25 (thus ending with 52 Tests), he could end up, in outline, the Mark Ramprakash of bowling.

Like Ramprakash, the problem is complex. In his lean build, his athleticism and his fitness - he is among the fittest in the team - he has a head start. Of course, he is also quick, though he slips onto the bat rather than thuds into it. Pace is pace nonetheless and it mustn't be discounted. On helpful tracks, he seams the ball in and out. His yorker is schizophrenic, sometimes a full toss, sometimes a half-volley and often precisely as it is meant. Less often than is expected or said of him, he gets it to reverse.

On occasions, he puts it all together fantastically; his two international hat-tricks against Sri Lanka and West Indies; three fine performances against New Zealand, his efforts in India last year, and against Australia at Perth just before that. Against England recently, he also bowled worthy spells intermittently, much like his career in fact. There is no chronology to his highs for there hasn't been any sequence to them - they have all come randomly. Some came before 2003, when he was just a young thruster; some have come since, when he has been one of the main men. Many of his best spells have come when Shoaib Akhtar has been absent, a couple have come with him present. The sample is so small, it is impossible to speculate a correlation. Instead, there is no pattern.

Primarily, his case is complex because no-one is sure where the problem lies. If he has all the attributes and bundles of potential, then why hasn't he yet translated it into something tangible? Does the problem lie in the position of his wrist at delivery, as Aaqib Javed has mentioned? Does it lie in his confidence, which others insist is fragile?

He rarely says anything himself although once, recently, he did say that he had been unlucky in his career: "People tend to look at my averages but don't see how many Tests I have played abroad or at home on generally batting tracks. They don't see the number of times luck has simply not supported even some good wicket-taking balls." Cricinfo's Numbers Game rationalised this sense even before. Clearly, he wants to be helped as well. Imran has tried, Wasim Akram has too (although both sessions have been so brief as to be pointless) and he has sought Aaqib's help as well. So far, not much has resulted.

So then, what is to be done? It is impossible to grasp any real sense of his career, so any definitive decision about him is doubly difficult. We haven't seen the best of him, undoubtedly, but we don't really know either quite what the best can be. For the management, the dilemma is equally perplexing. They are keen on perseverance, which is admirable given Pakistan's history of squandering talent, but it also draws its own conclusion: is he worth persevering with?

The management is also keen on giving a chance to bowlers on a well-populated fringe. With Umar Gul and Mohammad Asif leading an assortment who continue to bubble around, hands may be forced. In the immediate future, dropping Sami remains unlikely. In the long term, it could be retrogressive. And if it is done, it will be with more than a smidgen of regret. Regret for what, exactly, is still uncertain.