Pakistan Cricket Circus: Starring Shahid Afridi

If Pakistan cricket is a circus, there are very few people who can compete with their Captain for the Chief Joker’s place. Be it the ball-biting incident (is there a cricketing term for this?) or the pitch tampering incident, he leads the pack. But, hold on, he has just bettered his previous best (in terms of stupidity) now. Shahid Afridi has announced retirement from test match Cricket after playing a test match after a gap of 4 years. What makes this even special is that he never spoke about this when he came for the presentation 5 minutes before.

In less than 5 minutes, he announced his retirement from test match Cricket in a radio interview. He had announced that the Headingley test will be his last and Salman Butt will lead the side after that. The baffled Salman had no clue about captaincy being pushed upon him in a jiffy and remained quiet. Rameez Raja in the studio used the word knee-jerk quite a few times to explain the situation but was visibly happy at Afridi’s decision. His tone suggested that it was expected, after all this is Pakistan Cricket.

The icing on the cake was the Coach’s reaction. It was pretty evident that he was also not aware of the retirement announcement, but he would not budge. He came on with a bright smile and was confident that he would not persuade Afridi to comeback to test matches. Yeah, you read it right.

The Coach also revealed that Afridi has a thigh injury and it will be a different game under the new leader Salman Butt. The coach did suggest that Afridi may never play test match Cricket again.

Keep your fingers crossed; you may see Afridi score a boom-boom century in Headingley as he did in Chennai before 11 years and return back as the Captain for the 4 test matches against England.

All is fair in love, war and Pakistani Cricket.

JULY 16, 2010