[RazabQ]

Excellent points made by the posters - perhaps the most telling of which is Arnab's one; namely that Rafique bowls defensively because he feels he does not have enough runs to play with.

I will concede that one, but I must disagree with those who feel loop is unimportant. Loop which starts above the batsmen's eye level, and then has a drift and drop is what will cause the batsman's head to move (i.e. not stay still). When the head bobs, bad shots or mistakes happen. Loop is what will make a top class batsmen think twice about coming down the wicket at you - who knows perhaps his judgement of length or the line will be proved wrong and a stumping will result.

As a spinner you can almost get by without being a true "fizzer", but you can't get by without a loop. As for Jayasuria - he has canny variations of pace. He bowls two very well disguised faster deliveries, one that goes with the arm another that straightens. Then again, Jaysuria is a batsmen who bowls and really, should we be comparing our strike bowler with him?

Look at Daniel Vettori before his injuries. He had such beautiful loop. Rafique needs to mix up his flight and come up with a few more variations of pace. Only then will he get wickets on non flat, slow wickets, test or ODI wise.

That arm-ball is nice but just going on relying on that delivery will make him a one trick pony which any coach with a slo-mo camera will eventually solve.