Shaheen Shah Afridi surpassed his father-in-law to join an exclusive list of Pakistan bowlers on Tuesday (December 10) as he claimed a three-wicket haul against South Africa in the first T20I of the three-match series at Kingsmead in Durban.
Shaheen has completed 100 T20I wickets for Pakistan and is only the third player to do so. Before the start of the game, Shaheen was tied with Shahid Afridi with 97 wickets to his credit.
Only Haris Rauf (110) and Shadab Khan (107) have bagged more wickets than Shaheen in T20I cricket. However, Shaheen’s milestone came in a losing cause as Pakistan lost the match by 11 runs.
Shaheen claimed the big wickets of Rassie van der Dussen and David Miller before dismissing Nqabayomzi Peter. The left-arm speedster bowled 10 dot balls during his spell and conceded runs at an economy rate of 5.50.
Mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed also picked up a three-for but was fairly expensive as he leaked 37 runs in four overs at 9.25 runs per over. Right-arm pacer Abbas Afridi was the other Pakistan bowler who impressed as he finished with figures of 2/30 in his four overs.
Chasing 184 to win the game, Pakistan fell agonizingly short despite their captain Mohammad Rizwan scoring 74 runs. Rizwan came to open the innings alongside former skipper Babar Azam. Pakistan suffered an early setback when they lost Babar for a four-ball duck on the third ball of the third over.
Saim Ayub (31 off 15 balls) and Rizwan (74 off 62 balls) fought hard but could not get enough support from the rest of the batting order to get the job done.
