Even during Waqar's initial years when he had that insanely high WPM, his performance in Australia was poor.
Waqar faced Australia once during his peak years(90 -95), he averaged 25.8 and took 10 wickets in 2 matches and had a SR of 44.2. Dunno how it is poor by any measure.
During his peak, The best batting lineup in the world was the West Indies. He played six games against them, took 35 wickets against them(about 6 wpm), averaged 19.42 and struck @ 32.2.
2 Matches is too small a sample to decide one way or the other. Waqar never had a 5 WI against Aus (the best team during his era) in his career. Never did particularly well in Aus. IMO, those are pretty big holes if you expect his name to be taken in the same breath as Marshall's. Once again, not intending to diss Waqar's achievements here. Just saying that he would have been more "popular" as an ATG if he had a series against Aus or even India (especially away from home) like how he had against other teams like NZ or Windies in 90-91.
He is still an ATG fast bowler. Not denying that at all. But these are very valid reasons why his name does not come up like Malcolm Marshall.
After having watched both Windies and Aussie batting line-ups (
to which Waqar bowled), I would say that Aussies were the better batting line-up. Windies were great, but just like Indians they were full of flair and very unpredictable (especially in foreign conditions). And in 90-91 series most of their batsmen were past their prime or yet to reach it (Lara made his debut in the final Test). Let us not jump between the extremes here, I am NOT saying Windies line-ups were bad, all I am saying is Aussie line-up of 94-95 were much more dependable under tough conditions.
Even a direct man-for-man comparison (given how good each man was at that point in time -- not overall as a career) would work favorably for Australia. Most of the Aussie batsmen including Taylor, Slater, Waugh brothers and Healy were in their prime and pretty battle-hardened in 94-95. Boon was still very dependable. This was pretty much the exact team that wrested the World Test Champion title from Windies 6 months later. Despite the fact that Windies were on their way down, it was a huge achievement. One can never get the sense of it, looking back at the socrecards. Windies were never beaten in a Test series (home or away) for 15 years! You should have actually seen that series live to get a sense of how strong that Aussie team was. That Aussie team was an extremely good team in every sense. Extremely tough mentally. No wonder they dominated for so long.
IMO, Aussie team of 94-95 was the best batting line-up that Waqar bowled to, in his peak. Windies in 92-93 series come a close second.
Just to give you a comparison Windies never crossed 300 in their away series (90-91) against Pak in any of their 5 completed innings, while Aus (in 94-95) failed to cross 300 only once in their completed innings.
TBH, stats really don't give a sense of how tough that Aussie batting line-up was. You should have actually watched some of their matches against hostile bowling.
