Shahid Afridi is not too pleased with the last three deliveries that Shaheen Afridi bowled in the 19th over of Australia’s innings in the second semifinal of T20 World Cup 2021. All those three deliveries were sent out of the ground by the Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Matthew Wade as Pakistan lost another World Cup knockout game to Australia.
Before Shaheen got hit for three sixes on the trot, he had induced a false shot from Wade which had gone to Hasan Ali towards the area between square leg and midwicket, but Hasan couldn’t hold onto the catch and it just completely turned the game.
Shahid Afridi, however, didn’t like what followed after the dropped catch. According to Afridi, who has been a former Pakistan captain, Shaheen is not a medium pace bowler. He has got wheels, so what he should have tried to do was to bowl yorkers, but outside the off stump and not on the stumps. If the yorkers had been bowled at speed wide outside the off stump, it would have been hard to connect the scoop shots.
“I am not happy with Shaheen. Even if the catch was dropped, he should have used his head and tried to bowl outside off stump fast Yorkers with his pace,” Shahid Afridi said while talking to Samaa TV.
Shahid Afridi thinks it’s important for Shaheen to take his lessons from what went wrong
By trapping the Australian captain Aaron Finch leg before wickets, Shaheen Afridi had actually given Pakistan a rollicking start with the ball in the semifinal, as he was doing for them the whole tournament, but all his good work was undone by those final three deliveries in his last over.
Shahid Afridi praised Shaheen for his performances with the new white ball as he said he has only seen the great bowlers of the calibre of Wasim Akram bowl with the new ball like that, but Shahid also insisted that Shaheen needs to take note of what went wrong at the end and take his lessons from that as he goes ahead in his career.
