Under-fire Afridi skips practice

A day after creating a furore back home with his “love for India” statement, Pakistani skipper Shahid Afridi today skipped the team’s training session, citing “fever”, ahead of their ICC World Twenty20 opener against Bangladesh here tomorrow.

For his statement that he got “more love” in India than in Pakistan, Afridi received much flak back home yesterday with the legendary Javed Mianadad blasting him “shame on you”.

Afridi meanwhile sought to douse the fire by saying that he did not intend to demean his nation and was merely trying to give a “positive message” by showing respect to the fans here.

Pakistani head coach Waqar Younis however said it’s nothing to do with the controversy and added: “It’s not like that. He was not feeling well in the morning... So it’s better to take rest. It’s hot and humid out there.”

Later, giving an update on Afridi, Pakistani team manager Intikhab Alam said he was running fever in the morning.

“He over trained himself yesterday. He’s had slight fever in the morning and we opted to give him rest,” Alam said as the rest of the Pakistani camp trained for more than two hours in the morning.

The highlight of the training session was pacer Mohammad Sami, who did rounds of the stadium and seemed to have recovered from his toe injury.

Sami, who was hit on his toes by a local bowler during their practice on Sunday, missed their warm-up match against Sri Lanka yesterday that they won by 15 runs.