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If this is true it is somewhat surprising news. I just saw a tweet from Faizan Lakhani of GEO News saying Shahid Afridi is retiring from international cricket.
I guess we should have seen it coming given the public comments that were being made by Shahid Afridi and the Pakistan Cricket Board. I was definitely on Afridi's side in that fight though. It makes no sense to me that the captain doesn't get to decide the squad he will take the field with. How do you expect someone one to lead if you aren't giving them the tools they need? His is a career that was ruined because of the incompetence of the PCB.
Pakistan missed the boat big time on Afridi in the early part of the last decade. He was in and out of the team far too often. I have always said and will continue to say that the PCB dropped the ball on him as a test player. His test average of 36.51 is no joke. Lets not forget that most of those test opportunities were long before he really matured as a cricketer. He took his ODI and Twenty20 game to new heights with his bowling and fielding and I have no doubt he would done the same had he been given a proper chance in test cricket. He should have been playing as a 2nd spinner on the test team consistently.
His ODI career was mishandled as well. Pakistan has struggled to find good opening batsmen for a decade now. Shahid Afridi should have been used as an opener much more frequently. As a fan I was willing to take the gamble of him getting hot over pretty much anything else Pakistan cricket has had to offer for the past decade. I would have let him wreak havoc with fielding restrictions in place, it certainly wouldn't have produced results worse then what we got with the guys Pakistan has trotted out.
