Pakistan’s front-line fast bowler has had a difficult couple of years, but he believes he’s peaking just in time to make a mark at his country’s first home ICC event since 1996
Danyal Rasool18-Feb-2025″You’re still not a true cricketer,” his oldest brother said suddenly, out of nowhere.Shaheen Shah Afridi looked up, surprised at what Riaz had just said. A number of the siblings – Afridi has six older brothers – were sat at home, watching cricket when Riaz, who once played an international for Pakistan when Shaheen was four, piped up. It was late 2018 and Shaheen had taken Pakistan cricket by storm, first at the PSL, where he produced figures of 3.4-1-4-5, and later with a superb start in white-ball international cricket.”Why?””Until you play Test cricket,” Riaz said, “you’re not a proper international cricketer.”Related
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“Since then,” Afridi says, “I have held in my heart that Test cricket is my true and first priority.”Riaz also gave his younger brother one of his earliest lessons about the reality of being in the spotlight in Pakistan cricket: no matter the plaudits he was enjoying in the honeymoon phase of his career, criticism and tough times will never be far away.
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“Shall we sit here?””No.”The most complicated part of interviewing Pakistan’s most famous fast bowler is simply finding where to do it. As we walk through the warren of corridors, lobbies and coffee shops, it becomes obvious why Afridi dismisses the idea of sitting anywhere within public view so quickly. At about two metres tall, he can’t exactly hide, and the face perched on top of that body is one of Pakistan’s most recognisable. Every few paces, we’re stopped – or he is, more accurately – for pictures, autographs, brief chats that he tries to awkwardly but politely end, with varying degrees of success. Finally, at the back of the hotel in a little alcove hidden behind an outdoor seating area shaded by artificial palm trees, we pull up a couple of chairs.”When I got [Shubman] Gill out early on [at the 2023 ODI World Cup], I felt you could have heard a fly buzzing, such was the silence”•AFP/Getty ImagesAt ease, Afridi is in a jovial, relaxed mood, just before the start of the tri-series that will go on to serve as a dry run for the Champions Trophy.”It’s a first for pretty much all of us, isn’t it?” he says, eyes lighting up with the kind of excitement that has taken hold of Pakistani cricket supporters in the lead-up to the event. “Only a couple of players in this squad have played the Champions Trophy before, and though we won the last one, playing in front of our own people is special.”We always play these events away, and I’ve always noticed how the home team gets such huge support, which gives you a boost. When we played the World Cup [2023] in India with over 100,000 people watching at the venue, and I got [Shubman] Gill out early on, I felt you could have heard a fly buzzing, such was the silence. The crowd can create an atmosphere for that game, unlike what happens for any other game. And that is a different kind of pressure. We’re excited to experience that ourselves this time.”For Afridi, like everyone else, it is scarcity that has built up this degree of excitement. Pakistan last hosted an ICC event in 1996, and entire generations of Pakistani teams have gone without a global home event. Even Afridi’s own father-in-law, Shahid, whose career with Pakistan spanned two decades, never got to experience what Shaheen will over the next month.It is, for once in what seems like a while for Pakistan, the right tournament coming along at the right time. Pakistan have had a torrid 2024 in the other two formats – not consistent enough in Test cricket, where they finished bottom of the WTC standings, and not explosive or accurate enough in T20Is, where defeats to USA and India saw them eliminated from the T20 World Cup at the first hurdle.In Pakistan’s ODI series wins in Australia and South Africa, Afridi picked up a total of 15 wickets in six innings, the most of any Pakistan bowler•Brenton Edwards/Getty ImagesIf the year was salvaged, it was largely down to two away ODI series at the tail-end of 2024, where Pakistan came from behind to beat Australia 2-1, and swept the board 3-0 against South Africa. Pakistan’s fast bowlers, whose effectiveness and standing within the world game has been gradually eroding over the past couple of years, led that charge, with Afridi at the forefront: the most wickets at the best strike rate, and the lowest average among his counterparts. Pakistan took 54 of a possible 60 wickets against Australia and South Africa; no Australian innings extending beyond 35 overs.”Our ODI team hasn’t changed much,” Afridi says. The bowling attack, particularly, hasn’t changed much since before the World Cup. It’s been carrying on in a good run of form, and I hope that continues through the Champions Trophy.”Without any ODIs between the 2023 ODI World Cup and these two series and the one against Zimbabwe late in November in which he didn’t play, Afridi’s perpetual intensity helped him. “My net practice is like I’m playing a match,” he says. “I was dividing my bowling spells into conditions and innings phases, and how I’d adjust lengths and pace.”It appeared to pay off in Australia and South Africa, where he found ways of being effective at the top and tail of innings. He provided Pakistan with early breakthroughs in each of the three games against Australia but was also brought on to wipe out the middle and lower orders – a role he was especially prolific in during the clean sweep of South Africa.He accepts that the skill sets required in T20 and ODI cricket are different. “In ODI cricket you have to hit the same length more regularly, but variation plays a part as a surprise tactic. At the death, I try to bowl like I’m bowling in a T20. You have five fielders out as you do in a T20. You may get a bit of reverse, which you have to try and go for.”Afridi says he has been simulating match conditions while training for the Champions Trophy, bowling spells by conditions and innings phases•ICC/Getty ImagesBut he acknowledges ruefully that he says that more in hope than expectation. Two new balls have been used in ODI cricket since long before Afridi turned professional. “The squares are watered, so you can’t scuff a new ball by throwing it on there either anymore. One ball would be lots of fun, [but] I wouldn’t know much about it; I’ve only played Test cricket with one new ball!”As with any elite fast bowler, though, he has found workarounds. Against right-handers, he goes around the wicket once the swing has dissipated, which brings the stumps into play more. “The batter also has less of an opportunity to hit the ball, and if he misses, you should hit.”It has given Afridi a level of control and penetration on uncooperative wickets with the older ball. Though he disproportionately bowls around the wicket at the death, his economy rate from that angle is just a tick above a run a ball, and he has a superior strike rate and average than when he comes over the wicket. More than a quarter of his wickets have been bowled, as opposed to just over a fifth when he comes over the wicket, despite the early swing offered by two new balls.That flexibility is important in a format where he expects fast bowlers to get nothing in the Champions Trophy. “The ODI cricket we’ve played here, the wickets are all batting- friendly,” he laughs. “But it’s in Pakistan, and a new stadium has been built here in Lahore, the Gaddafi, so I’m excited to play here.” Unsurprisingly, it is Lahore, whose PSL franchise he captained to two consecutive titles in 2022 and 2023, where he enjoys playing the most, citing it as the “best atmosphere”.Afridi’s jovial demeanour, though, perhaps is partially down to him surrendering himself to the mood of the moment. He understatedly calls the last year “up and down”; there can be little argument it was the most challenging of his career. He was stripped of the T20 captaincy after just one series in charge. When the PCB drafted a statement on his behalf, appearing to suggest he was happy to move on, he denied having approved or made the statement at all.Afridi played just two of Pakistan’s seven Tests in 2024•AFP/Getty ImagesHe would later be released from the Test squad, and though that was partially down to Pakistan preparing spinning tracks at home, he wasn’t in it Pakistan’s Tests in South Africa either. While South Africa racked up 615 in a ten-wicket victory in Cape Town, Afridi was playing T20 cricket in Bangladesh in a league that was struggling to pay its players. While there has been conflicted reporting over Afridi’s current willingness to play Test cricket, he draws himself up higher in his chair at the merest suggestion he lacks it. “I will always be available for Test cricket,” he says adamantly.It has not changed his relationship with Pakistan cricket or its fans, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t affected by what’s said about him. Pakistan cricket’s sports journalism ecosystem has exploded over the last few years, with alternative accounts of various incidents routinely flying about, and there is often no way of parsing truth from fiction. The compromised relationships, conflicts of interest, relatively low barrier to entry, and virtually non-existent libel laws mean the bulwarks against false information are especially feeble.”What frustrates me is when people say things about me that are just not true. In Pakistan, unfortunately, a lot of the time fans and journalists do not tell or report the truth. That is really dispiriting to see. If people say something critical about me but it is based in fact, it doesn’t hurt me. But the lies do hurt, especially when journalists – whose job it is to tell the truth – do the opposite of it.””But,” he says, eager not to relitigate the previous year, “I try to live in the present rather than the past or future. I find myself in good form, and feel like I’m fully fit. There are always niggles and some pain for a fast bowler, but the physios are very good these days and can get us ready quite quickly. Our other fast bowlers are also in good shape, which is nice because you have to bowl in partnerships as a bowling unit. In the last few series and leagues, I have felt my body working well, and I feel like I’m in rhythm.”Afridi is not a little tired of the discussions about his bowling speeds: “I’ve never felt my pace is down in a way that it is stopping me getting wickets”•Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty ImagesHis pace, observed with hawk-like interest by supporters, has remained stubbornly in the mid-130s with the new ball, though it did go up past 140 at the death in South Africa. His bowling speeds have almost become a national obsession since a long-term injury layoff in 2022, and multiple explanations have been put forward. Some within the team management have suggested it is psychological, with Afridi reluctant to put more weight onto the front knee. Last year, the bowler himself even put it down to a malfunctioning speed-gun in Australia, and there was increasing evidence he was beginning to tire of the issue altogether.He feels more relaxed about it now. “People take a lot of interest in my speeds. But aside from the 2021 T20 World Cup, if you look at my bowling, I bowl between 135-137kph in the first over. But people notice it now and think my pace is down. But I’ve never felt my pace is down in a way that it is stopping me getting wickets. The body is a bit like a machine and can break down. Sometimes you get fatigued and you can’t show it because you have to do what the team requires of you.”The alcove we’re sitting in isn’t quite as private as one might have hoped. A view onto it opens up from some of the corridors on the higher floors of the hotel, and a small crowd begins to build up near where Afridi will inevitably have to exit.He throws his hands up. “I can’t put it off any longer,” he smiles, getting up. He runs the gauntlet to his room once more, as a couple of team security officials appear and try to keep the fans at bay. Afridi wears an easy smile; he’s in a good place with both his cricket and his body. Recent years have taught him none of that can be taken for granted.