It was the sixth match of Sameer Cup in the winter of 1996. The venue was Nairobi, a city of Kenya where cricket had just arrived amidst the harvest of tea plantations. Pakistan was playing Sri Lanka, an old Asian rival. The match was a tie breaker for Pakistan, not only did it require triumph but also a protruding run rate to reach the final. The green team, dressed in white, managed to score a thumping 371, the then world record for second highest team total. The tigers in reply could not hunt the swift target and lost by 82 runs.
It wasn’t Saeed Anwar’s 115 off 120 balls that served the team’s cause but it was a certain Pathan from Karachi who had been called a match ago as a replacement for the leg spinner, Mushtaq Ahmed. He walked down the crease to bat for the first time in international cricket. Many of his contemporaries accept the nervousness that reflected from their faces when they made their international debut but with Shahid, it was not the case. He played like he was playing in his backyard and scored 102 off 40 balls.
Who is Shahid Khan Afridi? A spoiled brat or a failed captain? A maniac or a legend? Over the years, we saw him walk down the crease and we prayed that he play like a mature batsman and win this one for the nation. At rare occasions, he would sail the boat across with what we call reckless batting but he would never play maturely. For him, there was a different definition of maturity.
Afridi was different. Afridi was royal for he did not pay heed to criticism. He just played, the way he enjoyed playing it. His will to win the contest cannot be objected, his method can be. But this fearless attitude and honest composure made him what he is, a class apart.
Let us not talk about stats, they can be used to support or deport him. Let us not boast our cricketing intellect to find loopholes in his style, decisions or shots. Let us talk about the sight of a cricketing ball sailing into the skies over mid-wicket region and falling in the stands after touching his bat. Let us talk about the speedy 130 k’s ball ripping into the right hander and hitting the leg stump. Let us talk about the charm that Afridi brought to cricket: the charm of unpredictability.
Afridi is a perfect match to cricket. The unpredictable player of an unpredictable game. A mere info of his arrival at the crease would make people stop their work. Most of the times, he would disappoint. But it is the appeal of his volatility that steals our attention every time. People don’t care if he hits a dozen sixes or a single boundary, any one of these is enough. There is no match to the sight of a full swing of the arm from Afridi and another 95 metres on the board.
This is what he did for a multiple times in his career, those small and timely cameos that left us talking about days after their happening. Symonds would never forget that mammoth six at the WACA that left the commentators dancing on their seats and neither would Ashwin for those two crucial blows in the final over and the list goes on. There was something in him that Wasim Akram had to admit that he as a bowler would only fear Afridi “for if it’s his day, he can ruin my career”. And we all loved him for that. We loved him for being the player of the tournament in WT20 2010. We loved him for the sixes against New Zealand in Sharjah. We loved him for the win over India and we loved him for making the Bengali spectators cry in Asia Cup. But now, we hate him.
It has now become a trend to curse everything that fails to give us expected results. Our lives have been revolutionised by the social media, we are now connected with the world. And we proudly show the world the way we treat our players. We hate Afridi for being a nuisance to our cricketing passion. As long as he wins it for us, we would chant his name but the moment he fails, we would blame him for the loss while ignoring the fact that certain other individuals failed us too. We would blame him for everything. We don’t care for your records or services buddy, we mean business. We want results, bring it to us and get our love. Fail us and get ready to be mistreated. We are no different than a corporate master who would forget all your services for some mistakes.
We are emotional for cricket. We get hurt when he fails to provide us results. So when we get hurt, we take revenge. We must tell him that he is useless and a burden on the team while ignoring the fact that a skipper needs support from the nation in an event like as big as the World Cup. The PCB chairman must come on the national TV and tell him that “you are leaving us after this tournament”. This is our way of vengeance.
Afridi might have a lot of problems in his playing style but this is how he plays. This is what he was famous for in the local grounds of Karachi even before coming to the international arena. A passionate, irrational pinch-hitter, it was his trademark style that he could not disown. You cannot ask Muralitharan to bowl fast. You cannot ask Afridi to play slow.
Another common trait of this cricket-crazy nation is its peculiar method of saying goodbyes. We always bid farewells amidst curses and disgrace. When a player is retiring, we don’t thank him for his services, we rather force him to go. We did it with Inzi for ‘humiliating’ us against Ireland in 2007. We did it with Shoaib Akhtar and many others. And we are doing it with Afridi now. How consistent we have been.
Cricket is beautified not only by players with big numbers in the statistics bar, but also with its unique characters. People like Chris Gayle, people like Paul Adams, people like Ajantha Mendis, people like Afridi. Let us love cricket. Let us, if not love, then appreciate and accept those who add flavor to this game.
The blogger, a student of BA (Hons) History, is the editor of The Gazette and co-editor of The Ravi at Government College University, Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected]