T20 World Cup: Shaheen Afridi showed intensity with the new ball, says Virat Kohli | Cricket News – Times of India

Kohli, who has boasted of forming a lethal pace-bowling attack across format over the last four years, had gone in with a pace-heavy bowling attack expecting similar results but it didn’t happen.
“He did bowl really well with the new ball and hit the right areas to pick up wickets. In T20 cricket, it’s about execution to pick up wickets with the new ball and he certainly did that and so credit to him. He put our batters under pressure and ran in with intensity with new ball and bowled in consistent areas. As a batter, you needed to be watchful and that spell put us on the back foot immediately and extra 20-25 runs seemed pretty difficult to get when you lose three wickets for 20 runs,” Kohli said after the defeat.
The opening two overs from Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Shami barely challenged the Pakistan openers Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. Neither of the swing and zip off the pitch was there compared to what Afridi had derived earlier in the night.

Afridi claimed he worked on getting the ball to swing on the eve of the match. “I bowled with short run-ups and concentrated to swing the ball. I know the ball doesn’t swing much here in Dubai but I had to do something. It paid off,” the 21-year-old left-arm pacer said.
“There is no shame in accepting that they outplayed us. As I said, when you step into the field as 11 players on either side, you have equal opportunity to win the game. There is no guarantee of winning every match but there is no chance of being casual,” Kohli claimed.
Kohli said that the dew played a huge role after the first 10 overs of the second innings. “The ball started coming on to the bat better. The slower balls weren’t gripping enough. We couldn’t bowl any dot balls to them. They outplayed us… with such conditions you need to win the toss,” he said.