A prolific all-rounder of his time, a hard-hitting batsman and a cheeky spin bowler who have troubled many teams in his prime has now officially accepted the board’s proposal of giving him a farewell to celebrate his illustrious cricket career.
He is widely known as the comeback man in the country that treats its cricketing heroes as celebrities, former captain and a celebrated all-rounder earlier this year announced his retirement from international cricket but decided to continue in franchise cricket.
Shahid Afridi, who played for Pakistan for over two-decades had previously rejected many offers from cricket board who wanted to give the 37-years old a fitting farewell.
Popularly known as ‘Lala’, all-rounder accepted board’s invitation to the series decider in Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium, where he was given a lap of honour and the crowd for one last time gave a huge cheer to their legend.
Here’s the video of that lap of honour:
Loud cheers earlier for Shahid Afridi at the GSL #Cricket pic.twitter.com/iG2usUWgMH
— Saj Sadiq (@Saj_PakPassion) September 15, 2017
Afridi’s farewell became a lot more special, as Pakistan defeated ICC’s World XI to clinch the three-match T20I series 2-1.
With his leg-break bowling, Shahid Afridi picked up 540 wickets across all formats, he represented Pakistan in 398 ODIs, 98 T20Is and 27 Tests. Afridi scored 8,064 runs in ODI cricket, though he did not create that much impact in five-day cricket, as he managed only 1716 runs. But in the fast-paced T-20 format he has 1404 runs up his sleeve. Respectively after making his international appearance in 1996 against Kenya at Nairobi.
Afridi recently played a match-winning hundred in Natwest T-20 Blast quarter-final, where he came into open the innings and rewind the clock with his big shots all across the ground.
Shahid Afridi has inspired generations in Pakistan and let’s hope the Pakistani great help youngsters achieve their goal and take Pakistan cricket ahead from off-the-field.