When cricket fans talk about Shahid Afridi, the first thing that comes to every one's mind is how devastating he could be for the bowlers. The question that comes to my mind, is that true?

Afridi came to the cricket world with a bang scoring the fastest century. All of a sudden, people were amzed by this youngster who could completely demolished the opposite bowling lineup. Then, bowlers started to find Afridi's weak points and there were and still are plenty of them.

So many players came and showed a lot of promise and perfoemed upto a certain level but then were gone out of the line up. Reason for that? They were not performing. They went through long droughts of lackluster performances and in the end were thrown out. Career ended.

Afridi on the other hand has somehow managed to stick around for a long time and still going. In fact he is still cosidered a big part of Pakistan's future plans for success. If we look at Afridi's career so far, there have been many times where he has failed miserably to perform. At times though he completely killed the bowling, but then again that's his style of batting. What I do fail to understand is that how in world has Afridi managed to stay in the team for so, mind mostly for ODI's.

Afridi has played 240 ODI', that's 2 less than Mohammad Yousuf. According to Afridi's profile, he is still only 27 years old, that's just not true at all. Then again that's not the point. The fact that Afridi has managed to play 240 ODI's and still is considered a big part of Pakistan's furure in fact some people were routing for him to be the next captain after Inzamam, is mind boggling. His batting average is only 23.37 in ODI's, although a decent average in tests at 37.40 but only 26 tests played so he has a long way to go in that regard.

As far as his bowling is concerned, in ODI's and tests he is sitting at 35.25 and 34.89 repectively. A decent average for a part time bowler. Though he has become a more regular bowler in ODI's as of late. But fact of the matter is, there are better part time bowlers in Pakistan team who can eat up those ten overs and have the same impact as a bowler maybe even better than Afridi.

The point I am trying to make is that I am sure there must have some better bowlers, batsmen or alrounder in the past who could have performed better than Afridi, maybe not as devastating but more effective. For example, Danish Kaneris has never been given a fair chance in ODI's to prove his worth as a geniune leg spinner. Abdul Qadir, Mushtaq Ahmed, Saqlain Mushtaq proved their worth given their chances not to say Danish is at their level but how do we know he is not until he is given a chance to prove that. Yasir Arafat is an alrounder who was never given a fair chance to prove he can some damage. Hasan Raza was always neglected by the selectors as a specialist batsmen. Yet they kept giving Afridi that chance to keep proving his worth. Yet he hasn't proved that he has a sure lock and worthy of that spot. I am sure a lot of people will disagree with that statement but that's the reason why I am starting this thread to get people's take on this.

How has Afridi manged to stay all these years. Was it worth to keep giving him that chance or would it have been to give someone else a chance. They still can do that, it's never too late to give youngsters a chance specially since they are trying to promote some of the youngsters.

Your take guys.