Islamabad : Former Pakistan cricket captain and swashbuckling all-rounder, Shahid Afridi, said Tuesday he had been misquoted in a recent interview where it was said that he had blamed Head Coach Misbah-ul-Haq for the 2011 World Cup semi-final loss to India.
Afridi shared a screenshot of the interview, stating that he had been ‘misquoted’ and that every batsman in the team could not sustain the pressure of the match.
“Unfortunately I have been misquoted in this interview. The 2011 defeat was due to batting failure of the team. The batsmen including myself didn’t sustain pressure of the chase. No blame on any individual!” he tweeted.
Arab News had quoted Afridi as saying: “Many people speak about Misbah that he played a slow inning,” Afridi said in an interview last week. “First, it’s the nature of Misbah, this is his game. He takes enough time [to settle]. He strives to take the game to the end. But this situation required [from him] to get the scoreboard going”.
During the interview, the former cricket captain had also praised the late Bob Woolmer as a good coach. “He [Woolmer] won’t do politics … He knew the strengths of each player, he knew about the weaknesses so when a player wouldn’t perform, he won’t call him names but support him, he would back him,” Afridi had been quoted in the interview as saying.
