Oops, he does it again! Afridi banned...

Monday, February 1, 2010 -- The Pakistani cricket was involved in another controversy as Shahid Afridi got banned by the ICC for two international games. He will thus miss the T20I game against Australia on Friday at Melbourne.

This ban would include the T20I against England later this year.

The reason behind the heavy penalty imposed on Afridi is that rather stunningly, Afridi decided to bite into the cricket ball. In the coach, Intikhab Alam’s words, he was surprised, but thought that Afrii thought it was an apple! And later the Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting decided to stay away from controversy by saying that he did not know what to say.

Eating into the ball could be seen as one of the ways of tampering with the ball and getting it to swing around. However, what was surprising was that Afridi had done it so blatantly in front of the 20-odd cameras that were present in the ground! Afridi himself had earlier said that he was only smelling the ball, but later admitted to his mistake.

Afridi has been involved in previous controversies as well. In a Test match at Faisalabad, he had tried to tamper with the pitch by using his bat but was caught on camera doing so. He has also had a controversy involving him swinging a bat at a spectator in South Africa.