Islamabad
Former speedster Shoiab Akhtar has revealed that he unintentionally had injured some cricketers while only showing his affection towards them.
“I don’t wrestle, it’s my way of showing my affection to other people and I basically crossed the line. When I like someone, I throw them.
“I broke Yuvraj’s back, have previously broken Shahid Afridi’s rib by hugging him, and I made Abdul Razzaq stretch his hamstring a bit too much,” he said while talking on the BBC’s Doosra Podcast.
“So my way of loving people is a bit wild. It was just me being stupid in my younger days but I never realised my own power. “I got into a fight once or twice in my career but I enjoyed a great relationship with my team. Maybe not the Pakistan Cricket Board, but with my team-mates I had a great time.
“Although I enjoyed playing cricket with my team-mates, I never enjoyed hanging out with them afterwards. I was basically a lone ranger,” he added.
The former pacer also recollected breakfast scuffles with Australia’s Matthew Hayden and verbals with English cricketer Andrew Flintoff. “Me and Australia’s Matthew Hayden once got into a fight at breakfast – we were wanting to hurt each other. Then when we got into the ground there was a verbal war. He’s twice the size of me but I told him size doesn’t matter in the fight.
What we did with each other was very bad but the crowd loved it, I loved it, he took me on. I said to him: ‘You’re not a better-looking cricketer than me, you’re very ugly so I want to get you out and get rid of you so I don’t see your face.’
“Once, in the ICC Super Series, I was injured and I told Freddie [Andrew] Flintoff I was not fit. He said: “You were born unfit’ and ‘you look like a Tarzan but you bowl like a Jane’.
“So when he was next touring Pakistan, the verbal wars started with Flintoff. I told him he had woken me up by what he said to me back in Australia. “In that series, I bowled the fastest ever. My last spell was faster than the first one. Freddie was badly hurt, he had no answers, I got him out a few times in that series.
“But these are the types of characters that need to re-emerge in the game,” added Shoaib, who retired in 2011 after picking 444 international wickets across the three formats.
The 44-year-old, who is recognized as the fastest bowler in the history of cricket, delivering a world record top speed of 161.3 km/h (100.23 mph) in a pool match against England during the 2003 Cricket World Cup also talked about the training involved in reaching the milestone.—APP
