The official handle of Gujarat Titans seemed to be taking a bit of a dig at the Pakistani fast bowler Shaheen Afridi today, as they uploaded a picture of Matthew Wade playing a scoop shot in one of the net sessions and captioned it “We have seen it before”.
The scoop shot of Matthew Wade got very famous after the semi-final match of the T20 World Cup last year where Australia was up against Pakistan. The game got really close towards the end on a very good batting wicket and Pakistan needed to defend 20 runs off the last two overs of the innings.
The Pakistani skipper Babar Azam decided to use his best bowler Shaheen Afridi in the penultimate over of the innings and rather than bowling a tight over and leaving 13 or 14 runs to defend for the other bowler in the last over, Shaheen conceded all 20 runs in the penultimate over itself, as Wade hit three sixes against him.
Shaheen Afridi prefers to bowl yorkers consistently in death overs
Since Shaheen Afridi’s go-to delivery in the death overs right through that tournament was the yorker, Matthew Wade anticipated it and played the scoop shot because he knew what the length of the ball was going to be.
Shaheen, after conceding one six, dragged his length slightly back, but Wade hit even that one for a six over the area between deep square leg and deep midwicket. Shaheen then went for another yorker and Wade anticipated it again. He was ready for it and scooped it over the keeper for the third six of the over as Australia won the game.
When Matthew Wade was practicing that shot again in the Gujarat Titans’ nets, they took a picture of him and captioned it in a way that reminded the fans of that T20 World Cup semi-final.
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙎𝙘𝙤𝙤𝙥! 🤩
We have seen that shot from Wade Bhai before 😏🏏#SeasonOfFirsts #AavaDe pic.twitter.com/eTxOaJ9khA
Advertisement— Gujarat Titans (@gujarat_titans) May 8, 2022
Gujarat Titans, at the moment, are at the second position in IPL 2022 points table with 16 points in 11 games.