Shahid Afridi was an enigma for world cricket. He came as a young leg spinner in 1997, scored the fastest ODI hundred of that time in his first innings, was primarily a batsman in the first phase of his career and as he matured the leg spin came back to him. He finished with more than 8,000 ODI runs and close to 400 wickets. He also had nine five-wicket hauls in ODIs which put him in the joint third position along with Brett Lee and just below Waqar Younis and Muttiah Muralitharan.
On 14 July 2013, Shahid Afridi delivered his best ODI bowling performance against West Indies at Providence. Pakistan were travelling to the Caribbean to play five ODIs and two T20Is and Afridi set up the first ODI with his all-round skill.
Shahid Afridi's 76 off 55
West Indies won the toss and put Pakistan to bat. Pakistan were tattering on 23/4 as Jason Holder ran through the top order. There was a partnership of 24 between Umar Akmal and Misbah-ul-Haq but on 47/5 Pakistan were still not out of danger. This is when Afridi made his appearance at the batting crease. For the next 19 overs, it was an Afridi show. Afridi and Misbah added 120 runs during this period and 76 out of those was contributed by Afridi. His 76 came off 55 balls with six fours and five sixes. Few late order cameos took them to 224/9 in 50 overs as Misbah scored 52.
West Indies also had a poor start as they lost the first three wickets for just seven runs. Marlon Samuels and Lendl Simmons crawled to 40 as Afridi was introduced to bowling in the 21st over. After that, it was all Shahid Afridi show. He got Simmons and Dwayne Bravo on back to back deliveries in the first two balls of his second over to start the carnage. He bowled 8 over on the trot and picked up 5 wickets for 10 runs in that spell. With West Indies on 96/8 in 40 overs, Afridi came back to bowl his last two overs. But he needed just six balls to pick up the last two West Indies wickets and finished the match. Afridi’s final analysis read 9-3-12-7. With this match, Afridi recorded the second best bowling analysis in ODI after Chaminda Vaas’ 8/19 against Zimbabwe.
