Shahid Afridi trolled for picking Rashid Latif in his all-time XI

Former Pakistan cricketer Shahid Afridi recently picked his all-time XI on Lord’s Cricket Ground youtube channel. In it, the players are told to pick the best all-time XI of the cricketers they’ve played with or against. Accordingly, Afridi picked his XI and formed a world beating side. However, him selecting Rashid Latif as the specialist wicket-keeper didn’t go down well with the fans.

As far as his XI is concerned, Afridi picked the likes of Saeed Anwar, Sachin Tendulkar, Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting and Inzamam-ul-Haq in his batting line-up. To add more legendary flavour to it, Jacques Kallis was also picked as an all-rounder. Moreover, the bowling attack of his team comprised of the players like Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akhtar, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.

One of the best wicket-keepers I’ve played with, says Shahid Afridi of Rashid Latif

However, many were left surprised to see Rashid Latif in Shahid Afridi’s XI despite having Adam Gilchrist in the side. For the unintiated, Rashid  featured in 37 Tests and 166 ODIs for Pakistan between 1992 and 2003. While he scored 1381 and 1709 runs in the two formats repsectively, Latif affected a lot of dismissals behind the stumps.

During his 11-year international career, he grabbed 301 catches besides affecting 49 stumpings. For the same reason, it seems that Shahid Afridi termed him the best behind the stumps. “Rashid Latif is one of the best wicket-keepers I’ve played with,” he said in the Youtube video.

Here’s the video:

However, the fans didn’t like it as they felt Adam Gilchrist was enough as the wicket-keeper in the team and there was no need of including Rashid Latif. The Aussie left-hander played a stagerring 96 Tests, 287 ODIs and 13 T20Is while taking more than 800 catches and affecting 92 stumpings. If Latif is compared to Gilchrist, the latter scored more than 15,000 runs for Australia and was clearly the better batsman.

For the same reason, the fans were left confused it seems as to why did Shahid Afridi pick Latif as the specialist wicket-keeper. As soon as the video was posted on Youtube, comments flocked in questioning the Afridi while some of them trolled him as well.

Here are some of the comments: