Pakistan legend Shahid Afridi did not spare his son-in-law Shaheen Afridi criticism as he slammed the left-arm pacer following the team’s exit from the 2026 T20 World Cup. Afridi said Shaheen was repeating the same mistakes he was criticized for earlier in his career. Shaheen did not have the best of times during the tournament, where Pakistan exited after their last Super 8 match against Sri Lanka.
The left-arm pacer collected eight wickets in five matches but had an economic rate of 10.52. Pakistan needed to restrict Sri Lanka to 147 in their last game after scoring 212 runs in the first innings to keep their chances of reaching the semi-finals alive. However, Pakistan’s bowlers were way off the mark, with Shaheen conceding 48 runs in his four overs.
He bowled the final over conceding 22 runs as Pakistan won the match by just five runs. In an interview with Samaa TV, Afridi was asked whether the pacemaker on his left arm had forgotten to skip death despite his experience.
“He (Shaheen Afridi) has been playing for a while now. You don’t know where to bowl the last from. He has been told many times that he should know these things by now. He is repeating his old mistakes again and again,” Afridi said on Samaa TV.
‘PAKISTAN TEAM NOT LEARNING’
Afridi was left surprised to see Shaheen over the wicket against Dasun Shanak who hit him for a boundary and three back-to-back sixes in the final over. The Pakistan legend condemned the strategy by Shaheen and claimed that the Pakistan side did not want to learn from their mistakes.
“When a right-hander bowls, you can’t bowl from the wicket. If someone wants to keep biting from that angle, the left-hander has to bite at the stumps. When the third-armers and batsmen are inside the circle, you can’t bowl wide yorkers. That angle becomes an easy hit for batsmen on Asian pitches. If you hit the wicket with a six, it would be difficult. I don’t know when these people will learn, nor do they want to learn,” she said. Afridi.
Shaheen and the players of Pakistan are ready to be punished by the Pakistan Cricket Board for a poor performance in the T20 WC 2026, where they managed to beat only one full-fledged team.
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Published on:
March 3, 2026 12:20 PM IST
