In an unanticipated move, the Afghanistan pacer Naveen-ul-Haq announced his retirement from ODIs at the age of only 24. Soon after landing in India on September 27 for the World Cup 2023, Naveen-ul-Haq announced that he will quit from ODIs after the conclusion of the upcoming World Cup 2023. This led to his trolling by the fans of Virat Kohli on social media.
Naveen made his Afghanistan debut in 2016 and has played in only 7 ODI so far, taking 14 wickets at an average of 25.42. His last ODI match was in January 2021, after which he had taken a break from the 50-over format to be fit “mentally and physically” for his T20 assignments which also included last year’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
A right-arm medium-fast pacer with the ability to bowl yorkers, Naveen is a valued commodity in the T20 circuit, having featured in 145 T20 matches so far in his career, across T20 Internationals, and in T20 leagues such as IPL, LPL, BBL and PSL. With more and more T20 leagues springing up – there were three new T20 leagues started this year in South Africa, the UAE, and the USA – his decision to focus more on T20 cricket doesn’t come as a surprise.
Naveen made his return to the Afghanistan ODI side only for this World Cup 2023 and will form a part of the pace department with Fazalhaq Farooqi, Abdul Rahman, and Azmatullah Omarzai.
“It has been an absolute honour to represent my country and I would like to announce my retirement from the ODI format at end of this World Cup and will continue to wear this blue jersey in T20 cricket for my country,” he said.
“It hasn’t been an easy decision to make but to prolong my playing career, I had to take this tough decision would like to thank the Afghanistan Cricket Board and all my fans for their support and unwavering love.”
Virat Kohli fans troll Naveen-ul-Haq with funny memes:
Fans of India and RCB superstar Virat Kohli trolled Naveen with tweets and memes. Fans remembered that Virat Kohli and Naveen had had a fiery verbal battle during the IPL 2023, and it also continued when both put Instagram stories on each other’s failures taking indirect digs at one another.
Here are some tweets from Kohli fans on this news of Naveen taking ODI retirement:
