Afridi Captaincy No Good, Won’t Return As Skipper: Butt
If ever there was a hope of Shahid Afridi’s comeback to the Pakistani national team as their captain in the future, it was quashed by the Pakistan Cricket Board chief, Ejaz Butt. Afridi had been stripped of his captaincy at the end of the series against West Indies, a decision to which he had retaliated by a ‘conditional retirement’ from cricket.
In an interview to the Pakistani television channel, Geo Super, Butt said, "As far as I am concerned he is not captaincy material for the PCB anymore. [As a player] he has done well in the past, he's been a good cricketer for Pakistan, there's no doubt about it."
Elaborating further, Butt also said that he had been pressured by various politicians into considering Afridi’s case and overturning his decision to revoke the all-rounder’s NOC to play for Hampshire, he had refused to budge.
"The governor of Sindh rang up, talked to me for one hour," Butt said. "[Former prime minister] Nawaz Sharif rang me. I told him, 'Have a heart, this is not a political issue, this is something different.' We are not part of politics."
However, what would surprise not only most Pakistan cricket fans but also something that one wouldn’t find elsewhere in the sport is that the board chief went on to criticise his captain for losing the two games to West Indies. Stunning, because nowhere else in the cricketing world would the board chief speak on selection issues or captain’s on-field performance. It is akin to a CEO of a multinational software company panning the quality of code written by one of the software developers in the firm.
On his part, Afridi wasn’t provoked enough to retaliate, which could very well have been the purpose of the interview. Much like he finds it difficult to let go of a delivery, Afridi allowed the barb to pass by saying that he was enjoying his county stint and he did not want to think of it.
