Why afridi bites ball

USMAN says:. March 17, at am. Yasmeen says:. February 26, at pm. Zaid says:. February 4, at am. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Dear Readers, While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP.

Afridi is officially the new Twenty20 captain, but that role has now been reverted to Shoaib Malik, the captain across all three formats early last year. Sport Homepage. Latest scores. Future tour dates. International teams. Women's cricket. Get Involved. Test Match Special. E-mail this to a friend Printable version. Shahid Afridi is Pakistan's regular Twenty20 captain. As you know, the top players were in South Africa at that time so obviously, there was less attraction for ordinary people to come to the ground, which is probably the main reason for the poor attendance.

Also, there was not much marketing for this tournament. Many people were not even aware about which channel was showing these matches. The media should have highlighted this tournament and made people aware of these fixtures. PP: Turning towards your international career, you played only nine Tests for Pakistan. What do you think is the reason for this and has justice been done to your talent? On top of that, my focus was then more towards T20 and one-day cricket.

I did not concentrate much on Test cricket and this is the reason I suppose I have not played too many Tests for Pakistan. As far as my performance is concerned, I took only 18 wickets in those nine Test matches.

I feel that my performance was not up to the mark as I was not concentrating much on Test cricket. To me this is the real reason why I could only feature in nine Test matches.

PP: Do you think you got a fair shot at playing for the national team or should you have been given more chances? In truth, the only real reason I used to get a chance to play in a Test match was as a result of someone like Mohammad Sami or Shoaib Akhtar getting injured. In a way, this was also another reason why I was not concentrating much on the five-day game and my performances were not good; I never knew when I would play next! Whatever the reason for my selection, the fact is that I have no one else to blame other than myself for the performances in Test matches.

My performance in one-day and T20 cricket was great though. When I came in to the national team, we were playing more one-day cricket and I focused fully on limited overs cricket, so naturally my interest in Test cricket suffered. PP: Your slower ball is one of the strongest assets in your arsenal. How did you become so good at bowling such a delivery? Later, with practice, it became a lethal weapon for me as I dismissed a lot of top batsmen with my slower delivery.

This delivery has played a very important role in my success as a bowler at international level. It is important to have a variety of tricks these days, especially when you are bowling at the death. You should be able to bowl slower balls to surprise the opposition as well as slower bouncers that deceive batsmen. Also, in order to pick up wickets, you need to know how to bowl reverse swing and yorkers, both of which can come in quite handy during the latter part of the innings.

RN: One day I was bowling in the nets to a batsman. While bowling, I actually missed my run up as I was about to reach the popping crease. It turned out to be a ball that spun a bit and also deceived the batsman as well.

So to answer your question, I developed and practiced this ball myself without getting any formal coaching from someone else. PP: Given the importance of such a delivery in the limited-overs format, are players also being taught to bowl this type of delivery? Is our coaching structure and supporting facilities able to help the youngsters improve as bowlers? RN: This is definitely an important type of ball to bowl for any bowler. He mentions that he bit the ball several times so as to dent it and end up with a rougher surface on one side, in order for the bowlers to get reverse swing.

Whether his bowlers did get the swing or not, Afridi became an instant sensation on YouTube when the video of him biting the ball like an apple went viral and not only that, he was also banned for 2 T20I matches, as he was charged with an article 2. Cricket News. Shahid Afridi admits to tampering with the ball by biting it in his autobiography.