Shahid Afridi "retires from Test cricket"

[deeps]

i'm shocked to say the least.

He is one of my favourite players. Part of the reason i support Pakistan. Disappointed to see him retire so early, wasn't expecting it. Was shocked he was dropped as well in his final test, and i'd have to say it could be more of a political move to drop him than anything else. He's had a lean patch with the bat last few matches, following that phenomenal series against india.

The crowds will drop drastically, pakistan cricket should do everything they can to bring him back.

When the crowd leaves a match, as soon as his wicket falls, you know you've got a special player on your hands. You can't just let him walk out, they must move heaven and earth to get him back. I'm not convinced of his reasoning that he wants to concentrate on the one day games.

The only thing i can see that will be different after world cup, will be Inzamam retiring. So could there be a rift there? Afridi and Inzi seem to have a good relationship though, so i'm not so sure.

 

[Armadillo]

It is a sad day for Pakistani cricket...
But this could be a blessing in surprise for them. Afridi concentrating on ODI could owe to him showing more consistency in that form of the game. Now we all know that bits and pieces players are no good in tests, specialists are needed. Therefore Afridi's retirement could help the cause of the Pakistani test team. He's had a few good knocks over the past year but entwined with those are numerous failures, which the team can do without. His leg spin has also been rather ineffective in the test arena where economy rates are (for the most part) irrelevant. His exclusion allows for another specialist in the side such as an extra seamer or spinner.

 

[no1_gangsta_786]

I think that now with Shahid Afridi not playing tests Faisal Iqbal should be given a run in the test team.....in his last 2 matches hes made good scores and now deserves a run in the team.....If Faisal Iqbal after a while is not playing too well we can give another chance to Asim Kamal who is a very good test player.

 

[marc71178]

It is - now we won't see him hitting the ball up in the air for single-figure scores in 1 or maybe 2 Tests and getting rapidly dropped as has happened several times before.

Funny then that he's never been dropped for a pair of single scores in a Test.

 

[marc71178]

Hahahaha gotta love a good Indian.

Fortunately we do have a lot of them on this forum...

 

[open365]

The ICC need to take a hint, stop playing so much cricket!!!!

A player of Afridi's stature should never even consider retiring from onw form of the game to save his physical and mental state for a world cup, it's crazy.

 

[Richard]

One of those "some" happen to be ex boss of PCB ,Majid Khan, who was proven wrong when Hasan Raza underwent bone scan test to prove that he was actually 14 yr age at that time.

As far as Afridi is concerned, he is around 3 yrs older than his declared age.

No test can ever conclusively prove anything, Dr Jamil Mohsin demonstrated that. I thought the test "proved" that he was 15, anyway?

 

[Richard]

How do you 'age' a cricketer, bone scan or no?

Is it like trees (Cut his head off and count the rings)?

From Matthew Engel, January 1997
Sometimes contemporary facts are even more elusive. During the Pakistan tour last summer, the fast bowler Waqar Younis was quoted in The Sun as confirming what many people in cricket had long suspected, that he was not born on November 16, 1971, as recorded in Wisden and in every other reference book. He said he was two years older than that.

I then approached Waqar for confirmation of The Sun story. He did not deny it, but said the date should be left alone, and demanded to know why it mattered. There was no ready answer to that. After all, there is no age limit in Test cricket. He is not cheating anyone; why should it matter? When Waqar signed for Glamorgan, he stuck to the 1971 date on his registration form, so there it must rest.

There are circumstances, however, in which it definitely would matter. In 1996 the first Under-15 World Cup was held in England, and Pakistan reached the final: some journalists wrote about players who performed with "maturity beyond their years". If anyone in this competition had lied about his age, that clearly would be cheating. Later in the year, there was an intriguing development. In October, Hassan Raza, Pakistan's top scorer in the final, was picked for the Test team against Zimbabwe, aged - according to the records - 14 years 227 days, making him the youngest Test player in history.

However, after the game, the Pakistan Cricket Board themselves rejected Raza's age, and announced that a test on his wrist - a bone-age study- showed he was 15, which came as a surprise to those of us unaware that the human wrist had the same qualities as the rings of a tree-trunk.

It also came as a surprise to Dr Jamil Mohsin, a radiologist working at the Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, who wrote to me - backing his arguments with impressive quotes from Greulich and Pyle's Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist (second edition), the Wisden of such matters - insisting that this test could never be regarded as exact, and that it was only intended to show whether someone's growth was in accordance with their age, not to prove how old they actually were.

.

 

[Richard]

Funny then that he's never been dropped for a pair of single scores in a Test.

No, but he's very often been dropped after just a handful of games which has resulted in an exceptionally flattering average, where most people would've had several more games and had their average go down a lot more.

 

[Richard]

Fortunately we do have a lot of them on this forum...

Or do we have 1 who has a lot of accounts...?

 

[Richard]

The ICC need to take a hint, stop playing so much cricket!!!!

A player of Afridi's stature should never even consider retiring from onw form of the game to save his physical and mental state for a world cup, it's crazy.

I don't really think anything can save Afridi's mental state.
He's something of a loose cannon.

 

[luckyeddie]

Thats something that was probably in stone age, thanks to modern medical science we don't have to do that now.

The purpose of scan is to determine the bone mineral density, which is different at different age.

I would suggest that Afridi's would be denser than most

 

[marc71178]

Or do we have 1 who has a lot of accounts...?

So you're claiming that the likes of Dasa, Jono, Sanz etc are all 1 person?

Even by your standards that's a bit outlandish.

 

[HowsThat]

Looks like the notorious "ego battle" and "infighting" has started to begun in Pak cricket once again, Afridi looks to have retired coz of differences with his skipper.

This retirement reminds me of the sudden shocking retirement by Rashid Lateef after zimb tour, later it was revealed that he retired in protest against match fixing by then Pak skipper Salim Malik.

If PCB boss doesn't intervene then Pakistan team would suffer and their performance will get poorer with time.

 

[open365]

I don't really think anything can save Afridi's mental state.
He's something of a loose cannon.

He bats with a high strike rate, what's wrong with that?

 

[Richard]

So you're claiming that the likes of Dasa, Jono, Sanz etc are all 1 person?

Even by your standards that's a bit outlandish.

So I was doing such?
No, I clearly wasn't.
Incidentally - I don't think any of the 3 have clearly made comments alike to those made by other accounts.

 

[Richard]

He bats with a high strike rate, what's wrong with that?

Err, so do Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya, Sourav Ganguly, Marcus Trescothick and about a million others at the current time. Almost all batsmen at the current time are strokeplayers.
But few if any play as many utterly stupid strokes as Afridi. About the only one who comes close is Mohammad Ashraful.

 

[Pothas]

Err, so do Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya, Sourav Ganguly, Marcus Trescothick and about a million others at the current time. Almost all batsmen at the current time are strokeplayers.
But few if any play as many utterly stupid strokes as Afridi. About the only one who comes close is Mohammad Ashraful.

Dhoni?

 

[marc71178]

So I was doing such?
No, I clearly wasn't.
Incidentally - I don't think any of the 3 have clearly made comments alike to those made by other accounts.

Since I was talking about good Indians, why would you say that we've only got 1 poster with many accounts?

Aside from the fact that those mentioned have been on at the same time very frequently?

 

[Richard]

You were talking about them?
You seemed to me to be responding to the (sarcastic) post by dontcloseyoureyes where he said "gotta love a good Indian", ie "isn't it stupid having all these biased Indians".
Clearly there was no reference to Dasa, hbh, Jono, SJS, adharcric, etc.