The toughest tour of my international career: http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482
The captain of Pakistan’s limited overs team Shahid Afridi has declared that the tour of United Kingdom was the toughest of his 14 year international career that started with a blaze in Nairobi in 1996.
A 16-year-old Afridi had smashed the world record for the fastest hundred in international cricket in only his second ODI. 299 matches later, he claims that the series against England was the toughest assignment of his illustrious career.
Afridi arrived back in Karachi after the ODI series concluded with England winning it 3-2.
Afridi declared that the defeat was disappointing, adding that he was desperate to win the match for his team and the beleaguered reputation of his country in the wake of the spot-fixing scandals.
He added that the team fielded poorly amid a master class from Eoin Morgan who denied Pakistan a face saving win after their incredible comeback in the series from a position of 2-0 down to 2-2 before the game at Southampton.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750.
They then left to the UK with a big task at hand - a neutral T20 and test series against the formidable Australians followed by the full-fledged test and ODI series against the hosts.
The Australians were beaten 2-0 in the T20 series whilst the test series was drawn 1-1 with Afridi relinquishing the captaincy after the first match at Lords, citing lack of temperament for test cricket as the main reason.
Salman Butt then led the tourists in the remaining five matches and started off on a positive note, becoming the first Pakistani captain in 15 years to win a test against the best test team in the world - a sequence that included an embarrassing 13 defeats
on the trot.
The test series against the hosts was a very tough job for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Salman-c88163 and his men and after a meek surrender in the first two matches, he succeeded in leading the team to a win at the Oval.
The final test at Lords was allowed to slip from a seemingly impregnable position, and it turned into an utter disaster by the time it had ended.
Pakistan lost the match by a record margin, and found themselves in the middle of the damning spot-fixing controversy that resulted in the suspension of Butt and his two most promising bowlers, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif who had rattled the hosts’
throughout the test part of the tour.
A bruised and battered team was handed over to Shahid Afridi for the T20 and ODI matches who were given a sound hammering in the shortest format of the game.
The ODI series was full of exciting cricket and somehow succeeded in saving the blushes for the tourists. Yet the series ended with a great deal of acrimony between the two teams - a fact that Afridi alluded to during the press conference staged at his Karachi
residence.
The tipping point came on the eve of the fourth match at Lords when English player Jonathan Trott and Pakistani pacer Wahab Riaz embroiled in an ugly altercation and almost exchanged blows.
While commenting on the incident, Afridi added that the match only went ahead when Trott apologised to Wahab, he noted that pulling out of the series would have only aggravated the situation.
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