Hassan Nawaz’s hundred v Shahid Afridi’s first hundred

3 minute read

Hassan Nawaz hit Pakistan’s fastest T20 ton today – a 44-ball effort against New Zealand. It was only his third international innings, which brings to mind Shahid Afridi’s absolute nonsense of a hundred the very first time he walked out to bat for the national side. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all.

Let’s do a head-to-head to prove it.

Entrances

The first thing to note is that hitting a hundred in your very first international innings amounts to a way more spectacular entrance than doing so in your third, because Nawaz in fact launched his career in Atapattu-esque fashion with successive ducks.

Afridi didn’t get to bat on his debut – even Saqlain Mushtaq came in ahead of him – but in his second match, against Sri Lanka, he came in at three. Let’s take a quick moment to savour the sheer Pakistanishness of that. One day you’re carded to come in at nine, behind Saqlain. Next match you’re number three.

Afridi – just 16 at the time – responded to the promotion exactly as you’d expect, by walloping the fastest international hundred of all time. (It’s since lost that title, but even today it isn’t often bettered.)

Winner: Afridi

Scoring rates

Nawaz reached three figures in 44 balls, while Afridi’s hundred came off the 37th ball he faced.

Winner: Afridi

Context

This is the big one. This is the one we want you to understand. Nawaz was playing a T20 game and Pakistan were chasing 205 to win. In this context, there is really only one way to play.

As we explain in our feature, Five fantastic, nonsensical or terrible innings that together explain the eternal appeal of Shahid Afridi the batsman, modern sloggery is dictated by circumstance. It’s a logical thing to do. Players hit fours and sixes with abandon because, in the T20 format, that is how you go about winning games.

In contrast, Afridi came out at 60-1 in the first innings of a 50-over match. Afridi had a choice. And this is what he chose. Rapid scoring is not about numbers. It is about the world in which those numbers happen.

Because it wasn’t just the first innings of a 50-over match either. It was the first innings of a 50-over match in 1996. A few months before, the fastest-ever hundred in ODIs had taken 62 balls. Sanath Jayasuriya then lopped 14 balls off the record, which is an insane margin of improvement. Afridi then went 11 balls better than Jayasuriya – an effort so out of time that it took 18 years for anyone to improve on it (and even then, only by one ball).

Winner: Afridi, by a mile

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