Shaheen Shah Afridi has not been a part of Pakistan’s recent Test tour of the West Indies and England. In fact, since 2024, Shaheen has only played three Test games, two against South Africa at home and one in Bangladesh earlier this year. His axe from the side hasn’t come out of the blue. Shaheen’s fall in pace, particularly, is often cited as the reason behind his dwindling form.
This has reflected in his numbers, with the last 27 wickets coming at an average of more than 40. The numbers are a world apart from what Shaheen once returned with. Making his Test debut with only three first-class games in 2018, he was an immediate success. He bagged 47 wickets in nine Test games in 2021, and no one would have predicted him to decline so ruthlessly at that point.
Shaheen is now set to make a return to first-class cricket after being named in the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) squad for the domestic season 2026-27, the same team he made his first-class debut for in September nine years ago.
Reminiscing about that game when he bagged 8 for 39 in the second innings in a losing cause, Shaheen said his first priority has always been red-ball.
“When I first played a first-class match in 2017 for KRL, that was quite a good debut,” Afridi, who took 8 for 39 as a 17-year-old in that game, said. “Red-ball cricket is always my first priority. I’ve always loved it. I didn’t get enough time to play because of international cricket, but I haven’t been playing much cricket the last couple of months. So it’s an opportunity to play red-ball cricket.”
Shaheen’s red-ball priority
It was in 2019 that he last played a domestic red-ball game in Pakistan, and a return to the format after seven years comes amidst increasing scrutiny over his bowling skills lately, particularly his pace.
Shaheen was not named in Pakistan’s 22-player pre-season Test camp before the West Indies and England series, though he was part of the white-ball camp.
During the recent Bangladesh Test series prior to the camp, he played only the opening Test match, where he grabbed five wickets across both innings. This was a surface where pacers from both teams found plenty of assistance to work with, but his returns did not reflect that.
“I’ll try to bowl the same way in first-class cricket the way I’ve bowled in Test cricket,” he said. “I’ve not played red-ball cricket the last few months. Before that, I’d been playing red-ball cricket continuously. If you play international cricket, then coming back to domestic cricket can be challenging. Because you’ve been playing international cricket constantly in all three formats, it keeps you busy. When you’re free, you should play domestic cricket.”
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