Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has predicted that Jasprit Bumrah will perform better than Shaheen Shah Afridi in the upcoming T20 World Cup 2022, which will be played in Australia in October. Bumrah had a slightly better run than Afridi in the previous edition of the T20 World Cup, which was played in the UAE.
The Indian gun fast bowler scalped seven wickets in five matches and bowled with an economy rate of 5.08. On the other hand, Afridi took seven wickets in six matches and bowled with an economy rate of 7.04. However, the left-arm pacer had bowled a match-winning spell against India as he had scalped three wickets and dismissed KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma in the very first over.
Meanwhile, both Jasprit Bumrah and Shaheen Shah Afridi recently missed out on the Asia Cup. Bumrah was ruled out with a back injury whereas Afridi could not play due to a knee injury.
Bumrah is all set to return to action in the second T20I against Australia whereas Afridi is recuperating in London.
“Look, how do you split those two guys? They are two of the best performing bowlers in the world in the last couple of years in all formats of the game,” Ponting was quoted as saying to host Sanjana Ganesan on The ICC Review.
Punter, as he is renownedly known, backed the experience of Jasprit Bumrah over Shaheen Shah Afridi. Ponting added that Bumrah has played more in Australia and has more experience of playing the big matches.
“I’ll probably go on experience alone – I’ll go for Bumrah. He’s played a fair bit of cricket in Australia now, played more in Australia than Afridi and has played more big tournaments as well than Afridi has.”
On the other hand, Ponting feels Babar Azam is technically better than Jos Buttler but then there is no comparison in the strike rate of both batters as the latter is way ahead. Ponting picked Buttler to have a better T20 World Cup than the Pakistan captain.
“Babar Azam, he is technically a better player than Buttler. You look at their strike-rates though and there is no comparison there, Buttler is much more dynamic, sort of a more 360-degree player than Babar is,” Ponting said.
“Buttler has also played more cricket in Australia with England and he has spent some time in the Big Bash with Sydney Thunder. So I’m going to go Jos Buttler on this one,” he added.
