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Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting was effusive in praise for the Pakistani duo of speedster Shaheen Afridi and skipper Babar Azam.
Azam won the Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year award while Afridi was named the winner of the Sir Garfield Sobers’ Trophy for Men’s Cricketer of the Year.
Ponting said the abilities of the Pakistani duo set up a ‘mouth-watering’ series when Australia tour Pakistan for a multi-format series in March.
“In all honesty, absolutely very well deserved. It’s an awesome achievement. Now with him, Babar and some of the other fantastic players they’ve got in that Pakistan line-up at the moment it makes for a really mouth-watering series coming up when the Aussies go there," said Ponting.
Speaking about Shaheen, he said, “He’s tall, obviously bowls fast, he had the ability to swing the new ball back into the right-handers as well … it looked like a really complete package that we hadn’t quite seen the best of yet,”
Ponting lauded Babar for his sensational form in white-ball cricket over the past five years rising to the summit in both limited-overs formats.
“He (Babar) has been great in T20I cricket in the past as well, hasn’t he? His white-ball cricket has been nothing short of breathtakingly good for the last four-five years,” said Ponting.