What makes Shahid Afridi popular?

What makes Afridi popular is what makes a eunuch's bawdy joke popular; it's what makes slapstick popular; it's what makes us enjoy the cheap and the risqué. Whatever makes Afridi popular is an impulse - a primordial, preprogrammed reaction - that people with expensive educations are embarrassed about experiencing. What makes Afridi popular is not something you'll ever have to teach your children, though you'll probably be tempted to teach them to forget it.

What makes Afridi popular is as vast as the sky, and just as obvious.

Maybe we can answer what makes Afridi popular - in Pakistan. That is more specific and, perhaps, trickier. What if we say that Afridi was the first star of a Pakistani Pax Cricketannica - the first star born in the era where cricket alone represented the nation's fantasy, no longer having to compete with hockey, squash or cinema as sources of a public's interest and adulation?

What if we say that Afridi was popular because his arrival was foretold in the myth of Pakistan cricket, like Neo in The Matrix? What if we say that he was the apparent embodiment of The Promised One - a fresh-faced teenager plucked from obscurity who conquers the world at the first time of asking? What if we say that Afridi's first innings was his only innings in the popular imagination - that the untelevised record that lasted almost two decades was played out a million times over in between?

What if we say that he exists as the lowest common denominator? What if we say that Afridi is popular in Pakistan because he represents uncompromised innocence? Well, if you say that, you'd have to be spectacularly naïve to only see innocence.

Afridi's intrinsic genius only flickers when the stars align and he is overtaken by a transcendental sense of responsibility

Consider this. On his watch as PCB president, Ijaz Butt survived a touring team being attacked by terrorists. Butt even survived subsequently calling the survivors liars. He survived the spot-fixing scandal. He even survived accusing the opposition of fixing right after it. He survived banning almost half the team. He survived letting them back in. But when Afridi said he was going to retire from cricket and not return until Butt was removed, guess who was left standing?

But a bumbling chairman is hardly the extent of Afridi's true influence. Here's another story. For the past few decades, the man who heads Pakistan's army lands without fail in various lists of the most influential people in the world. When Raheel Sharif, the current chief, found out - perhaps through his incredibly influential spy agency - that Afridi was in town, he cancelled his schedule to have Lala over for tea and a photo op.

Or how about this? Imran Khan - Pakistan's erstwhile Adonis, striving to become its Zeus - recently held a long-running protest in Islamabad against the sitting government, where every day a new celebrity or influential would join him on stage to pledge his support. When he invited Afridi, Imran went to the extent of saying that people of their mutual ethnicity would never forgive him if he were to refuse. Afridi never joined Imran on stage. Pathans still love him.

Then there's my favourite. Pakistan has long been in the grip of frightful militancy. Just one of its many consequences has been that working-class women working on a pittance to inoculate children against polio are shot dead all over the country. The motivation of the killers has its roots in tribal insecurities and religious obfuscation. Associating oneself with the vaccination campaign carries huge stigma and maybe danger. Yet Afridi's ambassadorship of it seems to have avoided controversy.

What all this means is that we might not have an answer for what makes Afridi popular, but we do know that the popularity makes him very, very powerful.

Afridi thrills and infuriates in equal measure, and dances a merry fandango on the ashes of the rule books © AFP

It is popular these days to view Afridi and Misbah-ul-Haq as antitheses of each other, which is a disservice to both. It is also a reflection of the fact that Afridi is still not understood on his own terms and that we need to define him in terms of what he is not. Either that or we reduce him to absolute simplicity. For example, someone said to me that Afridi is a perfect random-number generator; like with the universe, or a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters, eventually patterns begin to emerge.

What is the randomness in his approach? I mean, we all know the innings he plays, because they are almost always the same. There is an attempted slog off the first, or at the latest second, ball, and cross-batted so as to make purists wince. When he's in the mood, he adds the dab to third man to his repertoire. And even if he's in the mood, he gets it all wrong at some point soon. There is no finesse, and there is nothing unpredictable. There is no great effort, if there is any at all, to adapt and evolve, to learn and develop. This is how it is each time - a duck or a hundred.

But this would be to exclude his memorable, largely late-career antithetical innings, which show a rarely seen grasp of the game's requirements: the 65-ball 75 in Sharjah against Sri Lanka in 2011; the back-to-back fifties in the final two games of the 2009 World T20. Those are just two among a bigger handful that echo the sense and sensibility he showed in the 141 in Chennai 16 years ago.

These innings could be the reason why those who don't immediately think of him as an idiot go for the idiot-savant theory instead. Afridi has an intrinsic genius but one that only flickers when the stars align and he is overtaken by a transcendental sense of responsibility. It is a view, I suspect, Afridi subscribes to himself, albeit hidden behind his defence that he is primarily a bowler and batting is some sort of seance that he doesn't have control over.

No one - not the braying TV anchors, not the effigy-burning protesters, not even Sarfraz Nawaz, accuses Afridi of fixing

But a closer look at his batting statistics makes you wonder. In researching his numbers, I was surprised to see some strange patterns appear, particularly in ODIs. For someone whose batting performances are thought to be random, a graphical representation of his average across time is almost entirely a straight line.

By his 30th ODI, his batting average was 23.5, and during the next 350-plus matches it has never changed by more than three runs either side. Given that Afridi's innings are inevitably boom (boom) or bust, this suggests that he follows each good innings with a series of failures: only once in his career, for example, has he ever had three consecutive scores of more than 40. It almost seems as if Afridi knows just how much he has in the bank, and when he needs to replenish his account.

Of course, the longer one plays the more likely the average will plateau, which is why it is important to compare his batting average with his bowling figures. If his batting average soon found a level and stayed there, his bowling average has spent much of his career hopping about. Despite being originally selected for his bowling, three years into his career it was over 50. Not until his 159th ODI, six years into his career, did his average drop permanently below 40. Only since 2011, 300 matches into his career, has it found residence in the low 30s.

The contrast is significant. Afridi managed to effect change - or improvement - in his bowling till late in his career, but his batting has actually remained consistent. Different parts of the brain are probably used for the two skills, but it is still difficult to reconcile the professed lack of control over batting with the clear application shown in bowling. It is almost as if his bowling has existed to prop up the luxuries his batting took. Afridi the batsman has always seemed content to turn it on just before even his supporters become mutinous; Afridi the bowler has worked extremely hard to make sure he competes.

Lala land: Afridi's superstar status hasn't dimmed over 18 years as an international © AFP

That feeling is accentuated by those atypical innings. Afridi protests that he just isn't a good batsman, but those innings are the clearest proof that it is almost certainly a question of will. When he wants to, when he needs to, when he can block out the crowds he says are baying for him to hit sixes (sometimes, as of late, with earplugs), Afridi finds his feet working faster, his bat swinging smoother, and his brain recognising when to take singles. Then you never feel he's simply a poor batsman getting lucky but someone judiciously exploiting his obvious talent, someone who has learnt the meaning of patience.

In a way, these innings evoke the final years of Afridi's Test career. As a bowler his numbers in Tests, even at their worst, were almost always better than those in ODIs. As a batsman, his average shot past 30 after 11 matches, and continued to rise steadily thereafter. In his final season and a half in Tests, only the triumvirate of Inzamam-ul-Haq, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf averaged more.

But then, at an apparent peak, he abruptly decided to retire from the format so that he could concentrate on ODIs, with the 2007 World Cup his main focus. Given that he had slowly begun to find a role for himself in the Test side, he seemed to be sacrificing a potential future in the grandest format. But Afridi cited the immense pressure of expectations when he made his decision, and though he reversed it later, he only played one more Test.

You can detect a certain logic in the decision: ten years in and playing the biggest tournament of his career, Afridi wanted to focus on what he thought was his main strength. Yet I think now that he faced a dilemma that men often create for themselves: that when the chance arrives to become something beyond who we are, we instead cling to the idealised, simpler versions of ourselves we created in the past.

Afridi is titillation, not seduction; a cheap thrill rather than profound exhilaration - a tawdry, bawdy, tasteless experience

Just as he seemed to be transitioning into a player who could have an impact in both formats, Afridi ditched the more draining one for the one that had brought him fame. In that insatiable chase for Afridi the ODI batsman, the Test allrounder was sacrificed, while the ODI bowler was made to work harder. It remains among the most intriguing yet least examined decisions in a long career full of them. The futility of that decision, both in an immediate and a general sense, was laid bare when an altercation with a fan led to Afridi being banned for the first two matches of the 2007 World Cup. By the time he got to play, in the third match, his team was already booked on a flight home.

But if Afridi was like many in being afraid to aspire, and to explore his own potential, then he has mastered at least the rebirth. That same year, 2007, brought with it the inaugural World T20, a format Afridi says he was born for. He was Man of the Tournament, even though he failed in the final against India. But when the next tournament came around, in 2009, he reached some sort of platonic ideal of himself. Though in fabulous form with the ball and in the field, he had only scored three fifties across all formats in the preceding three years when he came out to bat in the semi-final. He knocked off a cool, controlled fifty and followed it up with another in the final. As the central catalyst for a world triumph, it locked in his legacy for all time.

And then he became lazy.

The bowling lost its mojo, the batting became more difficult to trust, though he never let things get too far out of hand. Each time it looked like slipping away, he dragged it back. Take a look at his ODI numbers since 2009, which have yo-yo-ed wildly. His year-end bowling average was 45.05 in 2010, 20.82 in 2011, 43.13 in 2012, 31.92 in 2013 and 41.56 in 2014. His annual batting averages since 2010 have fluctuated too, dropping from 33.38 to 22 to 15.16, but then rising to 23.21 and 27.23. Save for a terrible 2012, one skill has always seemed to click when the other one fails. The formula by which Afridi lives, in other words, is that he fails until he feels he has to succeed.

What makes Afridi popular? Ask the ever-increasing tribe of his female fans © Associated Press

So, instead of a fool, Afridi actually comes across as a conspirator, a player who knows just when to turn it on to be redeemed, but perhaps has never had the ambition to sustain himself.

If we are no closer to knowing what makes Afridi popular, we at least have the numbers to understand why he has been around for nearly 20 years - a remarkable longevity given the kind of game he is perceived to have.

Of course, numbers never do justice to the Afridi experience, but many might counter that we don't need art to explain him either. After all, Afridi is titillation rather than seduction; a cheap thrill rather than profound exhilaration. But in this tawdry, bawdy, ribald, tasteless experience, there is a fascinating, almost unbelievable realisation. If Afridi can always be relied upon to give his wicket away in scarcely believable ways, and if this same Afridi has also been seen to play sensibly and with patience, then why is it that he has never been seriously accused of fixing? (He was mentioned once in the Qayyum report, as the subject of a mysterious call made to coach Javed Miandad during a Sharjah game in 1999, in which Afridi, along with several other players, was accused of being in on a fix. Justice Qayyum found no evidence of any untoward behavior, and Afridi has never since been accused, not even by Sarfraz Nawaz.)

Take a second to think about this, because in the modern context of Pakistan cricket it is almost unprecedented. Everyone from Wasim to Waqar to Inzi to Javed to Imran to Saqlain has been accused by someone or the other. Every disastrous loss for Pakistan leads to winks and nudges, insinuations if not outright accusations. And yet in this hotbed of paranoia and intrigue, no one - not the braying TV anchors, nor their sycophantic guests, not the effigy-burning protesters or the eloquent columnists, not even your conspiratorial uncle or his superstitious mother, ever accuses Afridi of fixing.

The formula by which Afridi lives is that he fails until he feels he has to succeed

We abuse and accuse other players for letting us down, yet we find a way to reconcile ourselves to an Afridi failure without ever resorting to that kind of cynicism.

Why?

Perhaps because Afridi is what this nation sees itself as. In an effort to explain the Pakistani psyche, cricket writer and neurologist Saad Shafqat referred to three inherent tendencies: "… laziness, impatience and latent brilliance. Since we're lazy, we don't get engaged until we sense an opportunity. But once we do get engaged, our impatience drives us to get the job done quickly, and our latent capacity for brilliance makes it all happen."

Can there ever have been a lazier, more impatient and more latently brilliant cricketer than Shahid Afridi?

You see the ordinary Pakistani in Afridi's stupidest actions, the moments where he (like all of us) pretends to be smarter than he is (doctoring the pitch in full view of the cameras and Kevin Pietersen in late 2005, for instance). He is Pakistani when he resorts to being a moron to help out his own - how else would biting the ball make sense? He is Pakistani in how magnificent he is when he covets power - his form when chasing the captaincy is phenomenal - and how meek he becomes when he actually has power. He is Pakistani in a way that is reassuring and uncomfortable, both at the same time.

There are other countries who find themselves in their cricketers; Bradman with Australia, or India with Tendulkar. These are players who express the aspirations of a people, who come to exist as the omnibeings who give birth to monomyths. Afridi is not that sort of player.

He is revered not for his achievements but for his promise. Afridi is the last folk hero, a man loved by his people because he doesn't live how they should but rather how they do. In him we saw the best and the worst we have to offer, and with him we rose and we fell.

What makes Afridi popular is Afridi. All else is meaningless.

Ahmer Naqvi is a journalist, writer and teacher. He writes on cricket for various publications, and co-hosts the online cricket show Pace is Pace Yaar. @karachikhatmal

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