I seriously believe that Shahid Afridi is a highly over rated batsman. Too often he is portrayed in Pakistani media as the best that was or will be in Pakistan line up. Now I don't buy that at all. Simply glancing at few stats at Cricinfo would reveal what I mean here. Lets take his performance in shorter version to start with. Afridi has scored 6000 odd runs in almost 300 ODI at an average of meager 24. His "illustrious" career of 14 years is punctuated by only 6 hundreds & 30 fifties. On the other hand if you look at the career stats of few batsmen of same era across the border on Indian side, you would agree with me why BOOM BOOM is such an inappropriate title for Afridi.
Lets look at Virender Sehwag for example, he has scored 7000 runs & average of 34 in 220 odd ODI's. Having debuted 3 years later than Afridi and having played 70 ODIs less than him, Sehwag has scored twice the number of hundreds (12) than Afridi and has 5 more half centuries. Story doesn't change if you look at Yuvraj, who in his 10 yrs of ODI career scored 7000 plus runs in 250 ODIs at Avg of 37 studded with 12 tons & 43 fifties. I wouldn't even bother to compare his test performance against any Indian contemporary of his. He was simply not good enough to play enough test matches for Pakistan. Just 26 test in 12 years.
For the record both Ganguly & Dravid started their international career almost at the same time as Afridi did (practically for Ganguly it was 1996). However, it would be an absolute insult to the two legends if I compare them with Afridi.
Now, I am sure after reading this someone in Pakistan would jump out of his chair and scream "what about strike rate". Well my answer for that is simple, no one really cares for your strike rate if you don't stay on crease for long enough to make a difference. BTW in a T20 era you get a dime a dozen players with 100+ strike rate.
Ciao
Cool Frood!
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