Controversy has been a companion of former Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar in his cricket career. One of the controversies involved his teammate Mohammed Asif in 2007. Akhtar was sent back home for assaulting Asif with a bat before the 2007 ICC World T20.
Akhtar, in his autobiography 'Controversially Yours', claimed that he was provoked by Shahid Afridi. He hit Asif’s left thigh with a bat and bruised him. Akhtar was later fined, banned for three matches, and withdrawn from the squad for the ICC World T20 2007 in South Africa.
“Afridi was aggravating the situation and I swung the bat at both of them. Afridi ducked, but Asif couldn’t get out of the way, the bat struck him on his thighs and he collapsed. I had lost it. I had never behaved like this, especially in the dressing room,” wrote Shoaib in his autobiography.
Now, Afridi has talked about the incident in an interview and denied escalating the situation. “Things happen,” Afridi told Samaa.tv. “Asif had sided with me in a joke which enraged Shoaib and all this happened. But Shoaib has a very beautiful heart.”
Afridi also talked about his early days in cricket and his love for the game. He also revealed his father came to know about his cricketing talent through newspapers.
“When I played under 14 and 18, there was only cricket in my all life,” he said. “I used to sleep in my kit if I had a match the next day because I didn’t want to be late.”
“There was no social media at that time, so people showed my pictures in Dawn and Jang to my father and said his son was indeed up to something good," he said.
