When it was announced by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) that India and Pakistan will play their opening game in Asia Cup 2022 against each other, the fans of both sides were very keen to see the battle between Shaheen Afridi and the Indian top order batsmen again.
But, they will now have to wait for a bit more time to see that battle as Shaheen won’t be participating in the upcoming Asia Cup anymore because of a knee injury. The knee injury that Shaheen has suffered is not a result of too much bowling, but it’s an external injury that he sustained on Pakistan’s recent tour to Sri Lanka.
During Sri Lanka’s second innings in the first test match in Galle, Shaheen Afridi made a diving effort on the boundary line to stop the ball from going over the ropes, but it resulted in his knee slamming on the ground. The southpaw felt the pain straight away, but it felt innocuous at the time.
Shaheen still stayed on the field for quite some time before going off and applying some ice-pack over the knee. Although he didn’t bowl during that Sri Lankan innings any further, nobody thought it was a really serious injury until the injury started getting worse the next day.
KL Rahul said, "Shaheen Afridi is a world class bowler. It would've been a nice experience for us had he been playing, but unfortunately he's injured and ruled out".
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) August 26, 2022
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The injury of Shaheen Afridi didn’t heal as fast as expected
Shaheen was rested for the second test against Sri Lanka and then he was rested for the first two ODIs against the Netherlands as well. It was expected by the Pakistan management that Shaheen would be fit to play in the third ODI against the Netherlands and would get some match practice before the Asia Cup, but the injury just took way longer to heal than expected.
The current status is that Shaheen Afridi has been asked to not just withdraw from the Asia Cup, but he will not be there playing in Pakistan’s T20I series against England either. The expected time of recovery for Shaheen from here on is 5 weeks and if it turns out accurate, the left arm will probably make his comeback in the T20 World Cup.
