Pakistan fast bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi: “To be honest, I haven’t been able to bowl many out-swinging deliveries in my international career so far. This has been the case for the past two years”
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Pakistan left-arm seamer Shaheen Shah Afridi has shockingly revealed that he has struggled to bowl out-swingers for the last two years.
Afridi noted that he tried to bowl out-swingers during the recent tour of England, but didn’t have much success.
He conceded that this is something he must work on and rectify as without the ability to bowl out-swingers consistently, the 20-year-old feels that he can’t “become a complete bowler”.
“To be honest, I haven’t been able to bowl many out-swinging deliveries in my international career so far. This has been the case for the past two years and the closest I can come to bowling out-swingers is to angle the ball across batsmen which is what I did during the tour of England,” he told PakPassion. “I tried to bowl this way but that just didn’t go according to plan.
“I suppose how and what you bowl to a specific batsman is based upon one’s reading of his weaknesses, but yes, my attempts at angling the ball across the batsman didn’t work out as expected. The out-swinger is something that I really need to work on and develop, as without it, I won’t feel that I can become a complete bowler.”
Afridi is now playing for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the National T20 Cup and finished with figures of 1-38 off his four overs in the team’s opening match against Northern, who are the defending champions.
However, his effort with the ball went in vain as Northern cruised to a 79-run win behind Haider Ali’s 48-ball 90, which included seven boundaries and five sixes, and Zeeshan Malik’s 47-ball 77, which included eight boundaries and three sixes.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s next game will be against Balochistan on October 2.
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