Pakistani right-handed opener Abdullah Shafique opened up about scoring his maiden double hundred on day three of the second Test against Sri Lanka on Wednesday, in Colombo.
Abdullah, as classy as he gets, scored 201 runs with the help of 19 fours and four sixes leaving the cricketing world awestruck.
The 23-year-old talked about his milestone saying that practice was done according to Sri Lanka’s conditions.
“I practised while keeping Sri Lanka’s conditions in mind,” Abdullah said. “Before coming here, I knew that there will be spin conditions so I practised sweep shot accordingly.”
“In a Test match, the game changes with every session, so we wanted to play with the same intent we started our innings with. Rain interruption disturbed our momentum, but then we planned accordingly.”
Abdullah, 23, also said that bad time comes to every player but one must learn to stay strong during that.
“Every professional player has to deal with bad days, it comes to everyone. But a good cricketer is someone who manages to get himself out of that phase as quickly as possible by working on his weaknesses,” Abdullah added.
“When I wasn’t able to perform, I worked on my mistakes. When you are not performing up to the mark, so many negative thoughts come to your mind.
“Management and captain Babar Azam helped me a lot during that phase. They never made me feel that I am not scoring enough runs.”
About the celebration, he said: “No, I did not think about the celebration, whatever came to mind, I just did that.”
Abdullah (23y 246d) also became the third-youngest Pakistani player to score a Test double hundred after Javed Miandad (19y 140d), and Hanif Mohammad (23y 27d).
Earlier today, Pakistan reached 563-5 at stumps on day three of the second Test with a staggering lead of 397 runs after dismissing Sri Lanka for 166 in the first innings.
Other than Abdullah’s double-hundred, Agha Salman looked in great touch as he scored an unbeaten 132 runs in 148 balls, which included 15 fours and a six.
However, Saud Shakeel, Pakistan’s hero of the first Test, scored a fifty and became the first-ever batter in history to score a half-century in each of the first seven Tests of their career.
Previously, India’s Sunil Gavaskar, Pakistan’s Saeed Ahmed, West Indies’ Basil Butcher and New Zealand’s Bert Sutcliffe scored half-centuries in each of the first six Tests of their career.
- Abdullah Shafique