Former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi has revealed that he once tampered with the pitch in a test match against Australia in Faisalabad because it was a very flat pitch.
According to Shahid Afridi, who was speaking on Samaa TV, the pitch in Faisalabad was so flat that it was not only difficult for the fast bowlers to extract something out of it, even the spinners were finding it difficult to get some assistance off the surface.
Afridi said that because of the flat nature of the pitch, the match was getting boring, but suddenly a cylinder explosion took place in the stadium and the match had to be halted for a little bit because everyone’s attention turned toward the explosion.
Afridi recalled as everyone was trying to find out what happened and why exactly that explosion took place, he told his teammate Shoaib Malik that he should create a rough area on the pitch from where the ball could turn, as nothing was happening off the surface till that point.
Shoaib Malik encouraged me to do what I wanted: Shahid Afridi
Shahid Afridi said that Malik encouraged him to go ahead and create the rough area on the pitch because they were quite sure nobody was watching them. Before Afridi’s revelation yesterday, nobody apart from him and Malik knew that they tampered with the pitch in that test match. Even the match officials didn’t know because neither Afridi nor Malik was banned or fined.
That test match against Australia had taken place back in the day in 2005 when the broadcast technology was not as advanced as it is today and hence not every action of the cricketers was caught on the camera.
Afridi was, however, found involved in ball-tampering and pitch tampering on other occasions against different oppositions and he had to suffer punishment at the hands of the ICC. But, in that test match against Australia, he got away without punishment.
Afridi was banned for two ODIs and a Test in 2005 after cameras caught him deliberately scuffing up the pitch with his boots in a Test against England. That was not the end of it, in 2010 he was found guilty of ball tampering when he was caught biting the ball in a ODI .
— (((Åhmãd)))🖊️ (@krazysaint) May 7, 2022
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