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If you have done more advertisements than the average Pakistani cricketer, you can probably claim a last hurrah of your choice at a time of your choice and a place of your choice, and even claim the right to anything and everything that goes with an orchestrated farewell. Sahibzada Mohammad Shahid Khan Afridi has been doing just that in recent times, setting a precedent that will be of some help to any such cricketer in the future. But that character, mind you, will have to be really good at doing advertisements. Seriously.
Howsoever preposterous it may sound, the all-rounder, who has captured the fancy and fantasy of a generation since his 1996 debut, survived two decades with a single attribute: an extra dose of brawn without much in the name of brain. This can hardly be called a recipe for a successful or prolonged cricketing career, but 20 years later, here we are. With a man who has made a living out of nothing but muscle power in a game that needs some finer skills and something called temperament. And we are not talking here of Test cricket alone; even a T20 game has similar demands, albeit at a quicker pace.
That Afridi had the potential to turn a match on its head is beyond doubt. That he often did that is beyond debate. The only problem in the equation is that he did it the wrong way. With the potential that he had, he could have snatched victories from the jaws of defeat. All he had to do was to use a bit of brain. But, as it turned out, it was asking a bit too much from Afridi — affectionately known among his peers as Lala (elder brother). What he did with his brainless brawn was to snatch one defeat after another from the jaws of one victory after another. He pulled in the crowds alright and that gave him his star value in the advertising world, but in professional terms, he surprised everyone whenever he delivered.
Shahid Afridi’s demand for a farewell and PCB’s unnecessary public treatment of something so childish are indicative of the odd social malaise or two
There were two things that we can count as real gems in his career. One was his century as a Test opener. It was a gem because it showcased his true potential. In January 1999, he opened the innings alongside Saeed Anwar in a Test against India in India; a deadly pressure cooker of a combination for any Pakistan cricketer worth his salt. And he came good, scoring 141 runs off 191 balls, staying at the crease for 305 minutes. Just imagine, he spent five hours at the wicket! He still struck 21 fours and three sixes which together accounted for 102, or 72 per cent, of his runs; his strike rate being a decent 73.82. But he picked those 24 boundary balls from the 191 he faced pretty well. And the result was telling.
Afridi’s runs accounted for 49.3pc of the team total, and it was only and only on the basis of his innings that Pakistan could set India a tough target of 271 and win the match by 12 runs. Played in Chennai, it was a match in which neither team touched 300, and the only other century scored in the match was 136 by Sachin Tendulkar. Afridi’s innings was every bit as worthy as that of Tendulkar, only more.
It was this same restraint that underlined Afridi’s potential in the wham-bam T20 World Cup in June 2009. The tournament was played in England which is not a destination tailor-made for the likes of Afridi who are averse to the idea of the wobbling ball in the air and off the pitch. But a determined Afridi overcame everything, including himself.
In the semi-final against South Africa, he scored 51 off 34 balls. But it was the manner of scoring that mattered. He struck just eight fours and there were no, repeat NO, sixes in his innings. He faced with maturity an attack that included the likes of Dale Steyn and Jacque Kallis, and ended up scoring more than one-third of the team total.
In the final, which was against Sri Lanka, he did even better, scoring 54 off 40 balls. There were only four boundary balls — two fours and as many sixes. Leaving those four balls, he scored 34 runs off 36 balls, and one can still recall Afridi leaving aside balls that he thought were not there to be hit. Pakistan lifted the World Cup and Afridi was the standout performer.
The two rare episodes of brain’s triumph over brawn, as one can see, are across two extreme formats and a decade apart. The potential was there, but if ‘potential’ is still the only word used across 20 years, it is not something to be proud of. In fact, it is something to be ashamed of. ‘Potential’ and ‘talented’ are words for beginners. Somewhere down the road, people have to shed such tags and become ‘trusted.’ Lala failed miserably in that pursuit. Even worse, there was never such a pursuit in his career. And yet he wants a “proper farewell.” Lala, in his la la land, can do anything, it seems.
The Boom Boom fans — and they are in millions — would love to come up with arguments of their own; the number of sixes he hit, for instance. It is for these millions that one needs to put the big hitting and its consequences in perspective. But it will be effective only for those who would settle with the basic premises that cricket is primarily played to win; not to hit sixes. Fasten your seatbelts, folks. Here we go!
Across all the three formats, Afridi has represented Pakistan a good 523 times, having scored an average of 26 runs and having claimed 1.03 wicket per outing. His 11 centuries mean it took him a mere 48 outings to score one. In contrast, his 85 ducks mean it took him only six innings to register one.
Let’s get down to the Boom Boom part, which underpins his star value and remained his only reason to play the game. He hit a mighty 476 of them in his international career. Howsoever grand the number may seem, in the world of cold statistics, it comes down 1.09 sixes per outing. His career strike rate is 118 runs per 100 balls, which is quite decent, but is hardly as mindboggling as our emotions have made it out to be. In the context of Afridi’s career, it is just the equivalent of someone scoring six runs of five balls. One of them will definitely be the scoring ball — a six — and one will be the dismissal ball. The other three will be hit-and-miss affairs and would, not too rarely, include a half-chance. This is a 20-year career in a nutshell.
He was always more interested in playing to the gallery with utter disregard for context. He was not in the mould of, say, Adam Gilchrist or Mathew Hayden, who were big hitters with a big heart that was controlled by the brain. Afridi matched them every inch of the way in the first two components, but missed out almost completely in the critical component.
His hero status, frankly speaking, was a reflection of the lack of role models in our society rather than anything else. His demand (how else can it be put?) for a farewell, again, reflected another social malaise; the inability to know when your time is up. The manner in which the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) handled his demand was, in turn, a reflection of its penchant for spending time and energy on non-issues. Like Lala in his la la land, the PCB seems to enjoy its indisputable place in fool’s paradise.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 30th, 2016
