Mohammad Amir, the former Pakistan pacer, has backed Shaheen Shah Afridi, who’s gone wicketless so far in the T20 World Cup, saying that the fault lies with those who rushed back a fast bowler after a knee injury.
- Advertisement -
“You say our bowling is world-class. But apart from Haris (Rauf) and Shadab (Khan), no one is bowling particularly well. Shaheen has just come back from injury. We cannot blame him, we should blame the ones who played him. Shaheen is not forcing them to play him at gunpoint,” Amir said during a discussion with Salim Malik and Wahab Riaz on 24 News HD after Pakistan’s one-run loss to Zimbabwe in Perth on Thursday.
Shaheen Shah Afridi was out for three months with a knee injury, and the couple of T20 World Cup warm-up games last week were his first bit of competitive cricket since July. Against India and Zimbabwe, he was not as quick as he usually is, and did not pick up a wicket across eight overs, which went for 63 runs.
- Advertisement -
Amir said that Pakistan should not have had expectations in the first place from a fast bowler who had been recovering from a knee injury. “People were saying on social media that Shaheen is back when he was picked, but I’d said even then that you should not expect him to blow teams away,” Amir said.
“A bowler falls behind if he does not bowl normally for even a week, and Shaheen is coming back from a knee injury on top of that. It is the most cruel injury for a pacer, it can be career threatening, you ask Brett Lee, Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul, Sohail Tanvir.”
Wahab Riaz said, “It does not appear that Shaheen is fit, as he has always been a match-winner for Pakistan in the past.”
