Lala retires from international cricket

SHARJAH: It took more than a year for Shahid Afridi to read the writing on the wall.

Even as the country’s cricket authorities made it clear to him that his Pakistan career was over in the aftermath of his team’s catastrophic showing in the ICC World Twenty20 championship in India last year, Afridi kept hoping for a resurrection of his international career.

But the seasoned all-rounder who turns 37 on March 1 finally gave up on Sunday night when he finally announced his retirement from international cricket.

However, the good news for millions of his die-hard fans is that Boom Boom will continue playing in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) for another more two years.

Afridi, who played the last of his 27 Tests in 2010 and retired from One-day Internationals in 2015, quit as Pakistan’s 20-overs captain after the team’s poor World Twenty20 campaign in India last year.

“I have said goodbye to international cricket,” Afridi told reporters after smashing a 28-ball 54 for Peshawar Zalmi against Karachi Kings in the ongoing PSL.

“I am playing for my fans and will continue to play this league for another two years but it’s goodbye from international cricket. Now my foundation is important for me.

“I have played with seriousness and in a professional way for my country.

Known for his swashbuckling batting and tricky leg-spin, Afridi’s last match for Pakistan was the defeat by Australia in the World Twenty20 in Mohali in March 2016.Despite his intention to continue in the game’s shortest format, he has not been selected since that defeat.

The issue of his not announcing his retirement, in fact, had become a prickly one. Last year, the PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan, said he had reached an agreement with Afridi that he would step down after the World T20. “He is also a Pathan and I am also a Pathan and once the agreement is done between two Pathans it can’t be changed.”

However, before the tournament and during the inaugural PSL, Afridi revealed that he was reconsidering his retirement. So once he didn’t announce his retirement after the World T20, a new selection committee under Inzamam-ul-Haq simply stopped picking him. For a while Afridi hinted at wanting a farewell match, or series, so that he can leave the game “on a high” and “gracefully”. That, however, didn’t pan out and it would seem now that Afridi has put the matter to rest.

On form alone the decision would seem to make sense. He has been a slightly less luminous figure at the PSL this season than the last - for one, he relinquished the captaincy to Darren Sammy before the season began. He has, after six matches, only one wicket this season, though his economy rate has been good.
His 54 against Karachi was his first PSL fifty in 16 matches.

It also completes a three-phased retirement from the international arena. Afridi retired from Test cricket in 2010, although that Test itself was the first he had played in four years - after he had announced and revoked his Test retirement first in 2006. But the first sign that a real end was near came with his retirement from ODIs, after the 2015 World Cup. It was in that format that he really made a name for himself, beginning with the 37-ball 100 against Sri Lanka in only his second ODI in October 1996.

It was in the shortest format, however, that he found greatest glory. He was an instrumental part of Pakistan’s early successes in the format. He was player of the tournament in the first World T20 in 2007, in which Pakistan lost narrowly to India in the final. And he was the central performer when they went one better in the 2009 World T20 in England. It was around his stunning catch in a game against New Zealand that Pakistan’s tournament pivoted. And for composure, control and timely impact, he has never bettered his all-round performances in the semi-final and final of that event.

Such was his proficiency in those early years of the format that even as he calls time now, he leaves as the highest T20I wicket-taker, just three short of 100 wickets. And nobody has played more than his 98 T20Is.

Time, however, eventually caught up with him, and Pakistan. He oversaw a poor campaign at last year’s World T20, in which Pakistan looked like a team from an older era, losing three of their four games. Since his last T20I for Pakistan, against Australia in Mohali in March 2016, Afridi has been playing in T20 competitions around the world: for Hampshire in the NatWest T20 Blast, Islamabad in Pakistan’s National T20 Cup, Rangpur Riders in the BPL, and Peshawar Zalmi in the PSL. —with inputs
from agencies