There is doing things by halves, there is not doing things by halves and then there is doing things like Shahid Afridi. To do things like Shahid Afridi it is necessary to have absolutely no concern as to whether your way of doing things is self-defeating or not. It is about taking stock; weighing up the evidence; concluding that something is demented and highly unlikely to be successful; and then doing it anyway. It is about renouncing reason in all its forms and freewheeling through a garishly-coloured world of frightening highs and jaw-droppingly inevitable lows.

Shahid Afridi is probably the only person in the world who would think that sticking the ball in your mouth was a good way of surreptitiously altering its condition. He probably asked himself whether it was really a good idea and concluded that it wasn’t but that he might as well do it anyway. His motto is: “If you’re going to do something, do it in a stupid way and cross your fingers that everything works out okay.” There’s no sly running down the middle of the pitch from Shahid Afridi, there’s Riverdance during a bomb scare.

This is a man who, the first time he batted for his country, hit what is still the fastest hundred in any form of international cricket. People are slightly numb to his approach to batting these days, but it’s worth reminding yourself just how ludicrous it can be. Now that his leg-spin is clearly the stronger facet of his game (because he’s stopped bowling it at 80mph), people forgive him his ferocious swishing, but he played the same way when he was supposed to be a batsman and his career depended on how many runs he scored. Twenty20 shows him in the wrong light, because so many other people are batting in the same way. Afridi is committed to his approach in a way in which the Twenty20 specialists will never comprehend. He hit a run-a-ball fifty in a Test against India while trying to bat out the day. It’s at times like that when you truly appreciate Shahid Afridi for what he is: mental.

Alex Bowden writes at kingcricket.co.uk as well as for Cricinfo’s Page 2. He was TWC’s first Best of Blogs winner.