INCHEON: The entire Afghanistan team is a big fan of India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The players, however, don’t like Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi. They have their reasons too. Afghanistan captain Mohammad Shahzad adores Dhoni and feels he is lucky to befriend a superstar like him. With a stubble and smile, he comes across an affable man. He likes sharing anecdotes too.
He still recollects the day he met Dhoni during the 2010 T20 World Cup in the West Indies. “I was a little nervous. I met him at the ground and told him on his face I was a big fan of his,” he recollects. “I asked him if I could meet him and have a chat. He said OK. I was overwhelmed.”The episode that followed will stay with Shahzad forever. He even remembers the hotel room number. “It was 411. I went to his room. He was with a few friends.”Shahzad was floored by MSD’s humility. “He introduced me to his friends, went to the ground floor and got tea and biscuits for me. When I told him I would go, he said: ‘yahan mehman kaun?’” Shahzad is from Jalalabad in the Nangarhar province.“When we met in Bangladesh, he immediately gave me a bat, and said ‘This is a lighter one and I’ve got this specially for you’.
Dhoni also gave me a pair of gloves and a few inner gloves. He said he got all those for me.”Shahzad loves the helicopter shot too. “I hit Zaheer Khan for a four with a helicopter shot in September 2012,” he says.Shahzad said the original hero of the Afghans was Afridi. “But he did a bad thing,” he continues. “One of our players was a huge fan of Afridi. He went up to him and extended his hand and Afridi put his right hand behind his back and gave our teammate his left. That was an insult. The player was almost crying. Then, a few days later, we saw Afridi going to Dhoni to shake his hand and believe it or not, Dhoni offered Afridi his left hand! From that day, we all became huge fans of Dhoni.”