Former Pakistan pacer Waqar Younis was disappointed with the performance of Shaheen Afridi’s new ball bowling in the Super Four encounter against India at Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. The 23-year-old was not at his best against the arch-rivals India, making constant errors in his line and length at the start of the innings.
The left-arm bowler did exceedingly well for the Men in Green during the group-stage match against India, finishing with an impressive figure of 4-35, picking up the wickets of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya, and Ravindra Jadeja in the group-stage of the tournament but failed to make an impact on Sunday conceding 31 runs from his first three overs.
Speaking on Star Sports, Waqar Younis feels that Shaheen Afridi was totally off-color with the new ball failing to find the swing and rhythm against the Indian openers, who went hard at him from the outset of the innings. Younis believes the left-arm pacer tried too hard against India, which is why he gave them easy boundaries on Sunday.
“Shaheen was totally off-colour with the new ball. Nobody in the Pakistan team line-up tried to bowl the short ball and the bouncers. The swing as there – Naseem showed it from the other end.”
“If you bowl in the right areas, you will trouble the batters. But Shaheen has to think hard, even in the previous match, although he bowled a brilliant 10 overs, he was off-colour and tried too hard today and gave away easy boundaries,” Waqar Younis said.
Another new ball bowler, Naseem Shah, was able to extract movement and bounce from the surface by bowling back of a length and even claimed a maiden over to stop the attacking Indian openers, Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill, Naseem looked quite lethal from one end but found no support from the fielders with them putting down two chances of his innings bowling in the powerplay.
When Virat Kohli entered the crease, Shaheen Afridi was reintroduced into the attack in the middle overs. He succeeded in giving Pakistan its second wicket by tricking the young batting sensation Shubman Gill with an off-pace delivery.
Indian batting maestro Virat Kohli and KL Rahul built the innings in the middle overs before the rain stopped the play in the Island nation. The game will continue at 3:00 PM on Monday. India will resume the game at 147/2 (24.1 overs), with KL Rahul and Virat Kohli remaining unbeaten on 17 and 8 respectively and the Indian team will look to post a massive total on Monday to pose a tough challenge to the Pakistan batters.