Shahid Afridi: Maturing as captain and cricketer
Shahid Khan Afridi, aka ‘Boom Boom’ Afridi has lived up to his name and expectations by leading Pakistan for the first time in one day internationals. Afridi throughout Asia Cup 2010 has been seen leading from the front, be it batting, bowling or even fielding. He has exhibited great restraint and maturity in SriLanka and has written off his critics who believed that Afridi was not calm or mature enough to be a captain.
Pakistan’s cricket team and the fans would have wanted a different course of results at the Asia Cup 2010 as Pakistan, despite playing well in all their games, lost their initial two matches to SriLanka and India in nail biting endings, where sadly, they emerged as the victims of hard luck.
However, looking at the bright side, after months of controversies and uneasiness in Pakistan cricket, here was a team that put everything behind them and came to SriLanka, on route to England as a new determined outfit under their new captain Shahid Afridi and vice-captain Salman Butt, who also has been in excellent touch, keeping the batting line up in check and scoring important runs on the top.
Coming back to Shahid Afridi and his heroics in this year’s Asia Cup. Afridi started his captaincy campaign in the first match against hosts SriLanka where he hit a fiery 100 to put his team in control of a match which sadly Pakistan lost in the final over’s of the match. He then followed his batting with impressive work in the field with both his bowling and fielding. Another individual achievement for Afridi in SriLanka was that he over took Sanath Jayasuriya’s long standing record of hitting the most sixes and now stands on the top having hit 271 sixes in one-day internationals.
But the most important job that Afridi has been able to execute is his ability to unite the Pakistani players and in doing so, his philosophy remains simple, easy and to-the-point, “Perform and you are in the team, if you cannot perform then there is no point for you to be in the national squad”. It is this philosophy that seems to be paying dividends as Pakistan despite crashing out of the Asia Cup after losing their first two games, have a lot of positives to look at.
All their players seem to be finding some rhythm before the all important tour to England where Pakistan will first take on the mighty Aussies and try to get revenge for the recent humiliation faced by the men in green while they were touring Australia in the beginning of the year.
After playing their last game of the tournament, Pakistan let went lose at the Bangladesh cricket team as they piled on a mammoth total and their highest ever one-day score of 385 runs in the allotted 50 overs.
Shahid Afridi once again came to the party as he smashed 124 runs off just 60 balls, hitting 17 boundaries and four sixes as Pakistan ended their tour by winning comfortably by 139 runs. Bangladesh, despite managing to play out their allotted 50 over’s, only managed to make 246 runs with a loss of 5 wickets.
India will take on hosts’ Sri Lanka in a dead rubber before the final today, before meeting again for the final of the Asia cup 2010.
Pakistan head to England with confidence that their batting is finally clicking as despite all the losses, Pakistan did manage to display their batting power - with Imran Farhat, Shahzaib Hasan, Umar Akmal, Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal and Shoaib Malik - all managing to find their batting form.
So let’s just hope that with this moral boosting win against Bangladesh and the batting and bowling department working in sync and Pakistan continues to play good cricket against the Australians and then later on against the English team. At the end of the day, being competitive is the most important aspect in cricket and that is surely expected from the men from Pakistan.
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