Let’s just call it like it is, shall we? Pakistan’s bowling attack is currently the best in the world.

You can preface that statement with an “arguably;” you can quibble about adaptability to different conditions; you can question fitness; whatever makes you want to deny the obvious. I’m personally tired of ignoring this gargantuan elephant in the room. Maybe we’re reluctant to admit we have the best anything in light of being repeatedly shot down for embarrassingly paltry scores. But enough is enough.

If you’ve been watching Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Amir and Umar Gul over the last couple of months and Saeed Ajmal over the last few weeks you will realise that they’ve moved past the question over whether they’re the best.

The more relevant consideration is this: just how good are they anyway?

Let’s put modesty aside. We’re entitled to a little self-indulgence after getting mauled for most of the summer, not to mention dealing with more than one-fifth’s of the nation being hit by the biggest disaster of recent times with millions displaced. So pardon us for taking one of the few redeeming features our country has to offer and vigorously rubbing everyone else’s nose in it. Our bowlers are the envy of the cricketing world and are this generation’s McGrath-Gillespie-Warne.

I suppose we could attribute the lack of any substantial competition for elevating our bowlers to this status. Certainly, if Graeme Swann had the assistance of Andrew Flintoff in addition to James Anderson and Stuart Broad, England could stake a claim to the title. But they don’t and Anderson is a great bowler under cloud cover but a decent-to-average one in the absence of it. The South African and Australian attacks reek of sameness. Morne Morkel is not to Dale Steyn what Asif is to Amir and I’m going to ignore their spin options altogether. Also, it’s laughable that Mitchell Johnson was ever compared to Wasim Akram. As for India, maybe if Zaheer Khan and Sreesanth stayed fit I’d call them a decent bowling unit but, at present, Virender Sehwag is one of their main bowlers.

However, it’s a disservice to our bowlers if we promulgate their superiority with reference to the lack thereof in their peers. Amir and co. have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could be a force to be reckoned with in any era. The way Amir and Ajmal channelled Waqar Younis and Mushtaq Ahmed in their pomp; the manner in which Asif embodies McGrath; and Amir’s gradual metamorphosis into a clone of Akram. No, these guys aren’t just the best in a bad situation. They’re the best. Period.

The sameness inherent in other bowling outfits is something we are fortunately devoid of as each bowler in our attack represents a distinct challenge. Asif is a conventional seam bowler who relies on subtleties of length, able to extract movement in seemingly lifeless pitches with a snap of the wrist. Amir is the tear-away, skiddy swing bowler with the added feature of control and discipline lacking so sorely in his predecessors such as Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Sami. Gul, on his good days, is a combination of both - pitching it full regularly to extract swing or holding it just back of a length to allow the pitch to guide the ball. Ajmal has been a revelation in the last couple of weeks, finally developing into an attacking rather than containment option.

The feebleness of our batting should also be thanked for adding weight to the argument that our bowlers are the best in the world. The Australians have three batsmen in the top 20 ICC batsmen rankings while the Indians and South Africans have four respectively. It has to be comforting for a bowler to know that he has a Tendulkar master-class or Kallis epic to rely on rather than a Yasir Hameed cameo. Can you imagine how good we would be if we still had Inzamam’s services? But we don’t and we still manage to beat Australia and England with our weakest batting line-up in history. Connect the dots.

At no point in this summer have our bowlers had the luxury of runs or even a substantial lead to buttress them. It is immeasurably easier to bowl with leads of 435 or 440 runs in your favour than it is when you’re staring down the opposite ends of those barrels but that’s exactly what Amir and co. have had to contend with all summer. If bowling under perpetual pressure was the sole determinant of a bowling line-up’s quality, then we have earned this coveted title several times over.

You have to feel for our guys sometimes. The upper order’s failings have become such an inevitability that I’ve often wondered why it doesn’t have more of a psychologically debilitating effect on our bowlers. Would you really blame our bowlers if they flung the ball at Farhat, Butt or Akmal and declared that, since the bowlers are expected to make the runs in the series as well, it’s only fair that the batsmen pitch in with a few quick wickets. Honestly, sometimes I wonder why our bowlers even take to the field and don’t just pack up and go home with the batsmen so intent on ruining the best years of their careers.

But they don’t.

They run in with supreme self belief and continue to win sessions and manage to carve out a semblance of silver lining in our constant dark clouds of defeat. As unimaginable as it seems to find any inspiration in the face of such staggering adversity, our bowlers manage to dig deep and shovel it out and, armed with an undeniable conviction in their own skill, have dragged Pakistan back into contention repeatedly. I’m sorry to say, but such resilience, defiance, self-confidence and consistency has become alien to our culture and it’s heartening to see Pakistanis in the mainstream exhibiting the best our country has to offer.

Forget the fact that these guys are masters of their craft – our bowlers represent values we can all aspire to. Champions, as well as role-models. We really are being spoilt. Who cares if the analysts resist affirming our pre-eminence?  It can be our grand secret. Shhh.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.