Shaheen Afridi almost reveals Pakistan squad for T20 World Cup 2024

At last, Pakistan have won a game and ended their losing streak by claiming a commanding 42-run victory in the series concluding 5th T20I at New Zealand as they lost 2024’s first T20 series by 4-1. After the win, captain Shaheen Afridi made a bold claim about the Pakistani team already knowing 16 players out of the supposed 20-man squad that will fly to the USA and West Indies for the ICC T20 World Cup in June.

The series in New Zealand was Shaheen Afridi’s first major assignment after being appointed as captain for the shortest format. He took over the role and succeeded star batter Babar Azam who resigned from captaincy after Pakistan’s embarrassing group-stage exit from the ICC Cricket World Cup in India last year.

But Shaheen’s tenure as skipper did not get off to the best of starts as Pakistan lost back-to-back 4 matches in the 5-match series. They were coming off from a disappointing tour of Australia where they were hammered 3-0 in David Warner’s farewell Test series but Pakistan will be happy to at least avoid another whitewash.

In the 5th T20 at Christchurch, the visitors had batted first after winning the toss but were unable to post a dominant total on the board and asked New Zealand to chase down only 135. In response, the Kiwi bundled out for just 92 within 18 overs, leaving everyone flabbergasted and thinking how can a team that posted 180+ totals in the previous matches could not even reach triple figures.

And that mainly happened because Pakistan knew their backs were against the wall and they needed to get some positive momentum on their way back home after a lengthy tour that saw them play against 2 of the best teams in the world.

While Shaheen Afridi and Mohammad Nawaz took 2 wickets each, Zaman Khan and Usama Mir accounted for a scalp each but the man who made the actual difference was part-timer Iftikhar Ahmed. The 33-year-old produced a man-of-the-match winning effort by claiming 3 wickets at an economy rate of 6 in all 4 overs while his outing with the bat was not much special, scoring just 5 runs.

Shaheen Afridi Praises Iftikhar Ahmed And Claims Pakistan Are Continuously Backing Young Faces

During the post-match press conference, Shaheen Afridi was all praise for Iftikhar Ahmed for his contribution with the ball and hailed him for always keeping the needs of the team before his desires. Afridi also stated that Pakistan are more than willing to offer new young faces a chance and believes the team has already picked its core players.

“Ifti is a very experienced player and he’s always ready for bowling but we wanted to give everyone a proper chance so we were planning to give chances to youngsters this series, we sorted out 16-20 players for the T20 World Cup. I want to thank everyone, the crowd was fantastic.” – Shaheen Afridi said.

Meanwhile, the 2009 T20 World Cup champions who were the runners-up in the last edition in Australia, will look to produce something similar or even better in the upcoming 20-team T20 World Cup, especially after a humiliating end to the 50 over WC last year. The Green Army will kick off their campaign against the USA in Dallas before taking on arch-rivals India in New York on June 9 and their final group matches will take place against Canada and Ireland on 11 and 16 June.