Shaheen Shah Afridi: Legendary Pakistan fast-bowler Waqar Younis has expressed that he’s really worried over the lack of pace in the current line-up on the Test tour of Australia, something which used to be an exciting prospect of pacers coming from the country.In their 360-run defeat in the Test series opener, Pakistan’s fast-bowling quartet of – Shaheen Shah Afridi, Khurram Shahzad, Aamer Jamal and Faheem Ashraf rarely went past 140kmph mark. With Shahzad out due to injury, Hasan Ali, Mohammad Wasim Jr and Mir Hamza are the other options, who don’t inspire much confidence about breaching the 140kmph mark.
“Another thing that I’m worried about is that always when we come to Australia, one thing that excites is the fast bowling and this time around I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing medium-pacers or slow-medium-pacers, allrounders, there’s no real pace. People used to come and watch Pakistan pace bowlers really running in hard and bowling 150 clicks (kph), and that’s what I’m not seeing there.”
“That’s my worry and issue because I have not seen it at the domestic level also. There are a few injured, I can understand, but in the past you would always see a battery of fast bowlers that they could always bring on, but unfortunately that is not there and I’m really worried about that,” said Younis on ESPN’s Around The Wicket show.
With Naseem Shah out due to injury and Haris Rauf playing the Big Bash League (BBL), the responsibility lies on Afridi to inject that spark of extra pace, something which he has been unable to do. In the first Test against Australia at Perth, Shaheen had match figures of 2/172 from 45.2 overs.
“I’m not really sure what’s wrong with him. If he’s not fit, if he’s got some issues, he needs to go away from the game and fix that because if you are going to carry on like that you are going to become a medium-pacer. He used to bowl 145-150kph and used to swing that ball. What I’m seeing now, yes there’s a little bit of swing but his pace is way down… and that is not going to get him wickets.”
“Watching the first Test match was painful. We had moments, we had opportunities where we could have pulled the game back a bit but we didn’t take the opportunities. When Pakistan come to Australia they have to make sure their fielding is spotless… because Australia batsmen, if you give them opportunities, they’ll take it with both hands and make it big and that’s what we saw in Perth,” concluded Younis.