Pakistan Cricket needs a responsible http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sahibzada-Mohammad-Shahid-Khan-Afridi-c87933 – Part One
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Ali-Khan-c89356 Afridi’s name will be somewhere at the top with the two former fast bowlers.
Boom Boom was sacked from limited overs captaincy by Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) last month after the tour of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Green-c60723 defeated the home team by three games to two in the One Day International (ODI) series under his captaincy.
The reason behind his removal from the leadership was the violation PCB’s code of conduct as he gave controversial statements against the team management on his arrival back home and claimed that the coach, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Waqar-Younis-Maitla-c96193, is interfering in his job.
Afridi later announced a conditional retirement from international cricket and said that he will no longer play international cricket under the regime of the present cricket board.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ijaz-Butt-c64128 and the current administrators might have made a number of blunders in their tenure in PCB. However, they seem to be on the right side of this latest controversy.
This is not the first time that Afridi has given controversial statements in the media. The senior players of Pakistan’s team complained to the Chairman PCB before the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/ICC-World-Cup-2011-c100625 Cricket Word Cup 2011 about Boom Boom’s behavior and the way he used to criticize
his own players in the post match press conferences. This was the reason that PCB delayed the announcement of the captain for the World Cup earlier this year.
However, the all-rounder was retained as the skipper after the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754.
Majority of cricket fans in Pakistan want the flamboyant all-rounder to lead the country in limited overs cricket but the people, who understand the game, know that it is not in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755’s interest to have a captain like him.
Former Pakistan captain, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Syed-Zaheer-Abbas-Kirmani-c92392, who is also known as the ‘Asian Bradman’, is also one of those people who think that Afridi’s approach towards the game is not ideal.
He said recently, "I don't understand why he needed to do this. Today he is blaming this board but he has forgotten it was this board that supported and backed him even during his ball-tampering incident in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 and even when he didn't perform. Even
when the team reached the World Cup semi finals, the board not only rewarded him but gave him lot of respect".
Amongst the present players, Afridi is Pakistan’s most capped player in ODI cricket with 325 appearances, this should have automatically meant that the world famous all-rounder be the most mature and responsible player of the country.
However, this has never been the case, to say the least.
In the Faisalabad Test against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 in 2005, Boom Boom Afridi struck a magnificent hundred but he would like to forget that match because he tried to damage the pitch by running on it during the water break.
Even a http://www.senore.com/Cricket/TD-Paine-c2652 would know that there are a number of television cameras around, which are capturing, every single happening of the match. He was later banned by the match referee for one Test match and a couple of ODIs.
In January 2010, Afridi was leading Pakistan in the last match of the ODI series against Australia at Perth. The stand-in captain decided to bite the cricket ball like an apple in a crunch situation and was handed a ban of two T20 internationals. Apart from
the ban, the incident brought a bad name to Pakistan and made a mockery of country’s image in the cricketing world.
To be continued in next part . . .
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