“Boom boom, I’m going double boom boom for that,” exclaimed Shane Warne while his former teammate and fellow commentator Michael Slater almost lost his voice cheering for Shahid Afridi. The sudden hurrah in commentary box from Australian legends was not because Afridi had sent the ball into the orbit, nor was it because he had uprooted the middle stump with one of his flippers. It was because of an outrageous one-handed catch that sent the capacity crowd at the Dubai International Cricket into frenzy and reduced his age to a mere number.
At 37, Afridi at long-on, plucked one out of thin air to send Mohammad Umar Amin back to the pavilion in the second match of the Pakistan Super League between Quetta Gladiators and Karachi Kings.
Batting on 31, Amin decided to take on the lanky Mohammad Irfan and appeared to have got a decent enough connection to carry it over the fence for a maximum. Afridi, though had other ideas. Keeping in mind the new laws of the game, he set himself about a meter inside the ropes and timed his jump to perfection to first get a hold of the ball on his right hand and then stopped himself from getting over the ropes because of the momentum by throwing and inside the playing area. He then, swiftly got inside the ropes and completed the catch.
Afridi, who could not do much damage with the bat (4 off 8), made amends in the field. Apart from that moment of brilliance in the field, in his four-over spell, Afridi conceded just 23 runs, picking up one wicket.
Batting first, Afridi’s Karachi Kings scored 149 for 9 riding on the back of Collin Ingram’s blistering innings of 41 off 21. In reply, Quetta fell short by 29 runs.