As the Pakistan cricket team stares at a 3-0 whitewash in England ahead of day four of the Edgbaston Test on Saturday, pacer Shaheen Shah Afridi gears up to participate in a red-ball tournament in his country, the President’s Trophy. Afridi, once hailed as the greatest bowler in the world, has come down the pecking order in the last few years after picking up injuries. His pace has not been the same, and swing seems to have left his repertoire too. At least, he has not swung the ball as he did before. Recently, he was not selected for the West Indies and England tours, where, in his absence, the team has already lost three out of four Tests, and a fourth defeat is on the way.
Anyway, 26-year-old Afridi is looking to move on and wants to get back in the Test team as soon as possible. Playing in the President’s Trophy is a step in that direction. Believe it or not, he returns to domestic first-class cricket after a gap of seven years.
“When I first played a first-class match in 2017 for KRL, that was quite a good debut. Red-ball cricket is always my first priority. I’ve always loved it. I didn’t get enough time to play because of international cricket, but I haven’t been playing much cricket the last couple of months. So it’s an opportunity to play red-ball cricket,” ESPNcricinfo reported Afridi as saying ahead of the kick-off of the domestic tournament today.
“I learned a lot from my elder brother Riaz Afridi, because he’s played a lot of first-class cricket. In the longer format, the longer you spend time on the ground, the better it is for your confidence, and your lines and lengths get fine-tuned,” he added.
Afridi made it clear that he wasn’t participating for the sake of participation. He will give his all for his domestic team (Khan Research Laboratories), like he has given for the Pakistani team in the recent past. “I’ll try to bowl the same way in first-class cricket as I’ve bowled in Test cricket. I’ve not played red-ball cricket for the last few months. Before that, I’d been playing red-ball cricket continuously. If you play international cricket, then coming back to domestic cricket can be challenging. Because you’ve been playing international cricket constantly in all three formats, it keeps you busy. When you’re free, you should play domestic cricket,” he said.
