Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi is one mercurial individual who continues to draw the attention of crowd even after his retirement from international cricket. The 40-year-old still continues to ply his trade in various T20 leagues across the world.
For the ongoing edition of the Lanka Premier League, Afridi was named the captain of team Galle Gladiators with domestic talent Bhanuka Rajapaksa as his deputy. But, on Wednesday, Afridi returned to Karachi from Hambantota – leaving the LPL 2020 – to be his ailing daughter, who has been hospitalized.
Afridi took to Twitter to announce his exit from the tournament to attend to a “personal emergency”, adding he would return to join his team “after the situation is handled”.
Unfortunately I have a personal emergency to attend to back home. I will return to join back my team at LPL immediately after the situation is handled. All the best.
— Shahid Afridi (@SAfridiOfficial) December 2, 2020
Meanwhile, a picture on social media has surfaced showing one of Afridi’s five daughters being in the hospital. While fans continued to seek the authenticity of the report, some accounts on Twitter have claimed that the daughter of the former Pakistan skipper is seriously ill.
“Do you know the reason for @SAfridiOfficial ‘s return to the country? His daughter has been admitted to hospital. We pray for speedy recovery #LPL2020”, a tweet claiming to be the Twitter account of the LPL wrote.
https://twitter.com/LPLt20official/status/1334187847557861376
The account by the name LPL – Lanka Premier League (@LPLt20official), however, isn’t the real account of the league. The official account is (@LPLT20).
However, a Pakistan-based news portal, 24NewsHD, has also reported that Afridi’s 9-month-old daughter is sick.
In Afridi’s absence, Gladiators’ vice-captain Rajapaksa would lead the team in the few matches.
