'He is barking after eating dog meat', Irfan said     about Afridi

Former Indian pacer Irfan Pathan told the story of how he silenced Shahid Afridi in a verbal duel.

Fierce fighting on the field, great friendship off the field. This has been heard repeatedly for ages about the relationship between Indian and Pakistani cricketers. Many stories of verbal battles and murders between cricketers from the two arch-rival countries have been known from different people at different times. Irfan Pathan narrated one such incident with Shahid Afridi 19 years ago.

That was during the Indian team's tour of Pakistan in 2006. It was Irfan's second tour of Pakistan. He was not yet 22 at the time. Afridi was a very experienced and big star in international cricket at that time.

The story that Irfan told in the interview given to Lallantop actually went beyond the boundaries of mere gossip.                                                                                              

“On the 2006 tour, we were going from Karachi to Lahore. Both teams were on the same flight. Afridi came up to me, ruffled my hair with his hand and said, ‘How are you, Babu? Since when did you become my father…!!!’ But he was behaving like a child himself. He is not my friend! Then he also said some insulting things.”

Irfan then responded to Afridi through a conversation with Pakistani all-rounder Abdul Razzaq.

“Abdul Razzaq was sitting with me at that time. I asked him what kind of meat is available in Pakistan. He told me about different types of meat. Then I asked if dog meat is available. Razzaq was surprised and asked, ‘Why are you saying this?’

“I then said, ‘He (Afridi) has eaten dog meat, that’s why he’s been barking all this time.’ Afridi couldn’t say anything else after hearing that. If he had said anything then, I would have said again, ‘Look, he’s started barking again.’ But he didn’t speak again during the entire flight.”

Irfan claims that Afridi never got into a verbal fight with him again after that incident.

“From this incident, he understood that he couldn’t win a verbal fight with me. That’s why he never spoke to me again.”