The eyes of Eden Gardens always stopped at Shaheen Shah Afridi. His long limbs and blue eyes, his genial smile and the quiff the breeze could not ruffle. The crowd watched him, as though he had cast a spell on them. Babar Azam searched for him, whenever he needed a moment of inspiration, or a suggestion. His colleagues reached out towards him, if they needed a note of advice or help; the fielders would scream his name, whenever the ball ventured into the deep. Even the Bangladesh batsmen peered at him, to see whether he was warming up. He met the gaze, demands and needs of all.
It was the evening where Afridi took on at least half a dozen guises — leader, lead-bowler, talisman, old-ball intimidator, new-ball virtuoso and hope-giver. His bowling set-up the day, his aura and leadership the match. He showed he is not just a natural speedster, but a natural leader too, perhaps the concoction that could help Pakistan stagger through the dark days. There is both the physical as well as metaphorical presence, an air of calm authority. His conversations on the ground are concise, but those around him, even if they be more experienced, just keep nodding to him. His fast-bowling accomplice Haris Rauf once threw light on the qualities that make Afridi: “He is much younger than me, but far more matured and sensible than I am. He has an extremely smart brain, and is obviously the leader of Pakistan’s bowling attack.”
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He is no novice in leading men. Under him, Lahore Qalandars not only won their maiden PSL title, but also defended it. His coach at Qalandars Aaqib Javed has vehemently pushed for Afridi captaining his country’s T20 team. “The way he carries the team and his style of working has been great for Qalandars. If someone can amp up Pakistan cricket and take it in the right direction, that is Afridi,” he told Cricket Pakistan.
All that could wait, as Pakistan wanted their premier bowler to produce a stirring performance to preserve their narrow semifinal hopes. He not just answered the call, but whipped up his finest performance of the series. Pakistan wanted early wickets — he produced two with his first 10 balls. Pakistan wanted one in the middle overs — he provided them too. Pakistan bowlers wanted someone to guide them — Afridi showed them the way. The match flowed in the tempo he set, and his colleagues bowled in the path he charted for them. He attacked the stumps more, so did Rauf and Mohammed Wasim. He extracted reverse — and soon did Rauf and Co.
But all of these little things that embellish his persona was lost in the thrill and theatre of his bowling. There is not a more joyous celebrator of a wicket. Watch him spin and soar after he knocks out Mahmadullah with a corker.
He leapt and roared, turned himself around with a cute pirouette upon landing, blew a kiss skywards and posed with his arms spread out like the massive wings of an airplane. At this moment, the only figure you saw among the thousands in the stands was Afridi and the only voice was his. As if he was the only one that mattered — and at that moment, he was perhaps the only one that mattered after all.
The crowd sank into silence. They were in a fleeting world between seeing and believing, before they gathered their memory and began to replay the ball in their minds, from whichever angle they had watched it, before they stretched their necks towards the giant screen at the ground.
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The first impression could be that the ball was not as magical as they had first seen, thought or imagined. It’s in the third, slow-motioned viewing that the beauty of the ball unfolds. This was not a ball from nowhere, a sudden burst of magic. Mahmadullah was forewarned. When a left-arm quick, and as proficient as Afridi, begins to bowl from around the stumps, his designs are crystal clear. He would look to angle in off a length; he would look to shape the ball away or make it hold off the line. The ball was not reverse-swinging, Afridi was not cranking up the speed gun either. So the Bangladesh batsman, the finest of them in this tournament, knew his intentions. Yet, he was helpless. This is what Afridi does — you need not always produce the unbelievable or the unrepeatable, but still you produce wickets, moments, and fear.
The wicket had the imprints of his mastery over his craft rather than his fondness to produce magic. He was unable to curl the ball into him, so he went wide off the crease to exaggerate the inward angle. He did not purchase extravagant away-seam movement with the semi-old ball, but subtle margins suffice. The angle sucked Mahmadullah’s eyes and body to the leg-side, before the ball, at the last possible moment, deviated away, almost reluctantly. The batsman falling over enhanced the drama.
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The movements were beautifully minimalistic. The ball swung a trifle when it landed, and then it moved away a fraction, almost a decimal. Such movements confound batsmen more than prodigious deviations. The left-armer’s away-swinger from around the wickets is as devastating a ball as the in-swinger to the right-hander from over the stumps. The angle invariably makes the batsman play at the ball. As does the length.
The crowd slumped into a nostalgia trip, braving the jammer-induced data lethargy to fish out the footage of Wasim Akram stupefying Allan Lamb with a similar ball. A similar ball indeed, but with vicious inward curve and expansive away movement. But this was the crowd’s Afridi moment. For the remainder of the game, they watched him as though he had them in a trance. In a bit, he would start reversing the ball. He produced arguably his finest ball of the game — a devilishly curling in-swinger that hammered into Shakib Al Hasan’s toes before he somehow stubbed it to safety. He then took one away from him, which again he managed to negotiate.
How he failed to collect another five-wicket haul is still a mystery. But the piece of statistics would hardly bother him or his team, because it was the day he was their talisman, leader and much more. It was a day the eyes stopped at him.