Shahid Afridi will play for Hampshire in this season's Friends Provident t20 Cup.
Twenty20 cricket – which, in truth, never really goes away – is back for its English summer bash. The Friends Life t20 starts on Wednesday night with Hampshire playing Somerset at the Rose Bowl, a repeat of last year's final, which Hampshire won.
Rather like a band about to make their difficult third album, these are interesting times for English Twenty20 cricket. From next season each county will play 10 rather than 16 group matches, while dipping attendances last year confirmed a sense of a format still finding its level.
Twenty20 thrives not only on extreme performances, but also on the magnetism of personality. With this in mind the curtain raiser for an as-yet rather buzz-free season is the ideal moment for Hampshire to be unveiling their new star signing. Shahid Afridi, travelling impresario of the six-hit, will make his debut on Wednesday at the Rose Bowl.
These are, as ever, interesting times, for Afridi, who on Monday announced his retirement from playing international cricket for Pakistan. Or did he?
"Let's see," Afridi said on Tuesday. "I'm retired but just from this cricket board. If this cricket board will finish then definitely I will come back." It has been said that you are no one in Pakistan cricket until you have retired at least three times and Afridi was suitably conciliatory when asked if the door might now be shut.
"No, no, no. I'm enjoying my cricket and the people want to see me in international cricket as well, so definitely I must play."
Afridi had just played his first innings for Hampshire in a Twenty20 match against Surrey's Second XI in the placid suburban surrounds of Purley, a club ground that falls some way short of being Afridi-sized.
Batting at No4, international cricket's record six‑hitter clubbed a frenetic unbeaten 44, an innings full of flying edges and one memorable back‑hand tennis‑shot six off Chris Schofield into the gardens at mid-off. International semi‑retirement certainly seems to have lifted a burden from his only-ever-marginally-burdened shoulders.
"It is a great honour to play for Hampshire," he said. "My team‑mates are very good. The captain, Corky [Dominic Cork], is full of entertainment and he's a very experienced guy so it's great fun. I haven't played for a month so I had a little bit of stiffness bowling. I will give my 110%. There are some good young players at Hampshire and the boys are capable of winning this series again."
Twenty20 cricket has certainly been a boon for Afridi, more so than most Pakistani players who are excluded from the riches of the Indian Premier League (his Hampshire team-mate Michael Lumb has just been paid $80,000 – £49,000 – for playing a single game for the Deccan Chargers, in which he made a two-ball duck).
Afridi is surfing the lesser tides of the short format. He is already booked to lead one of the new franchises in the inaugural Sri Lankan Premier League, which starts just as the Friends Provident group stages end. "I will be back if we [Hampshire] reach the finals," he promised. Later this year he will also captain a team in the Bangladesh Premier League. Little wonder, the cynic might argue, the strains of being a Pakistan international cricketer can wait for now.
"It's a great entertainment," Afridi says of the format. "For people who don't know about cricket this is the right game to bring them to and show them how entertaining this cricket can be."
Not perhaps the slogan Friends Life would have chosen to launch the season – cricket for people who don't know about cricket – but this is still decidedly on‑message with the need to get back to packed Twenty20 grounds in a chilly financial climate.
On the field, Afridi's Hampshire look a decent bet to have him haring back from Sri Lanka for another final. More of a bowler these days, Afridi was the leading wicket-taker at the World Cup, and a wrist-spin double act with Imran Tahir looks a potentially irresistible combination.
It is not just his county who will be hoping for more explosion than exasperation from this most mercurial semi-retired entertainer over the next six weeks, as the T20 looks to stave off a sense of incremental wither in the land of its birth.
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