Sohail relishing good friend Shahzad’s wicket

sharjah — Mohammad Shahzad had set the Sharjah Stadium on fire, so to speak, on Wednesday with his batting pyrotechnics, bludgeoning 74 runs from 16 balls, on the first day of the T10 League. On Friday, the crowd turned up in sizeable numbers and with high expectations of some more fireworks from the burly Afghanistan wicketkeeper-batsman.

But Shahzad flattered to deceive. After pulling Sohail Khan for a six off the second ball he faced, it was the Pakistani who had the last laugh. He beat Shahzad with three dot balls before finally getting him to play into the hands of Shahid Afridi.

Speaking after the match, Sohail said, he was not worried about Shahzad although the opening batsman was coming into the match after that blistering knock against Sindhis.

“If he is a Pathan, then so am I,” Sohail joked. “But frankly, Shahzad is a very dear friend to me. He played very well in the first match. In fact past two days he has been challenging me and I am always ready for challenges no matter how big a player is.

“I know his weakness. If you bowl at his body he gets scared and that’s what I exploited and I was successful.

“Having said that, Shahzad and me share a lot of banter. Like for instance he told Shahid (Afridi) bhai that he will take me for a lot of runs and I told him if he is able to hit me for a lot of runs I will take early retirement,” added the bowler laughingly. The 34-yearold, who is hoping to make a comeback into the Pakistan team, said T10 is ideal for Olympics. “The format is short and fast.” Meanwhile Rilee Rossouw felt his team Rajputs were short by some 15 runs. “I think they bowled at least two and a half very good overs, they executed their yorkers well and stuck to their plans, so yeah, I think we were short by 15 runs,” he said. Rossouw said batting with the 37-year-old Brendon McCullum was something special.

“It was the first time we batted together and I told him later that it was special for me to bat with a player of his calibre.”