Family dinners are officially a write-off.

Shahid Afridi, the man who treated international cricket like a high-stakes gambling floor for two decades, is playing a new game. This time, the stakes aren’t a World Cup trophy or a sponsorship deal for a questionable body spray. It’s the career of Shaheen Shah Afridi, his son-in-law and, arguably, the most lethal left-arm pacer on the planet right now.

Shaheen is back. He’s bowling at speeds that make speed guns rethink their life choices. He’s swinging the new ball like it’s tethered to a magnet in the off-stump. In any sane sporting ecosystem, you’d lock this guy in the starting XI and throw away the key. But Pakistan cricket isn't a sane ecosystem. It’s a chaotic startup that’s been in "stealth mode" since 1992, constantly pivoting while the board members scream at each other on LinkedIn.

Shahid—let’s call him Lala, because everyone does—has decided that the best way to manage his son-in-law's "comeback" is to keep him in the dugout. He’s doubling down. He’s benching the kid. Again.

"I’ll bench him again," Lala told the press with the kind of breezy nonchalance usually reserved for Silicon Valley CEOs announcing a mass layoff over Zoom. It’s a move that feels less like strategy and more like a flex. It’s the ultimate "Objectivity" LARP. Shahid wants the world to know he’s not playing favorites, even if it means sabotaging the team’s win probability. It’s optics over output. It’s the sports equivalent of a CTO refusing to ship a bug-free update because his nephew wrote the code and he doesn’t want the board to think he’s biased.

The friction here isn't about fitness. Shaheen has already cleared the hurdles. He’s passed the beep tests, survived the grueling net sessions, and looked every bit the $10 million asset he is. The conflict is purely cultural. In a region where "nepotism" is the default setting for every government office and corporate board, Shahid is overcorrecting so hard he’s actually crashing the car. He’s trying to prove he’s the most honest man in the room by lighting the room on fire.

Shaheen, for his part, is playing the "good soldier" role. But you can see the glitch in the system. Imagine being the best at what you do, being fully optimized, and getting told you’re staying on the bench because your father-in-law needs to win a PR war against "bias." It’s a waste of prime hardware. Every over Shaheen doesn't bowl is a loss of data, a missed opportunity to calibrate for the next big tournament.

Lala’s logic is a relic of an older era, a time when "tough love" was a substitute for actual management. He’s treating the national team like a family dinner table where he’s still the one who decides who gets the last piece of chicken. It’s a weirdly personal brand of gatekeeping. He’s effectively throttling the team’s bandwidth to protect his own reputation as a "neutral" observer.

The fans don't care about Shahid’s moral high ground. They want to see 145-click yorkers and broken stumps. They paid for the premium subscription; they don't want to watch the backup stream. The price tag for this ego trip isn't just a disgruntled fast bowler—it’s the competitive integrity of the side. If the best players aren't on the field, the game becomes a scripted drama, a reality show where the executive producer is also the lead actor’s relative.

It’s a classic Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) mess. It’s a cycle of drama that makes Twitter’s rebranding to X look like a smooth transition. Shahid Afridi has always been a disruptor. He disrupted bowling lineups, he disrupted retirement announcements (repeatedly), and now he’s disrupting his own family’s professional trajectory.

Shaheen will eventually get back on the field. The sheer gravity of his talent will force the hand of whatever committee is currently pretending to run things. But the message has been sent. In Shahid Afridi’s world, the brand of "Lala" is always more important than the performance of the product.

Is this a masterclass in impartial leadership, or just a very public display of a man refusing to let the spotlight hit anyone else, even his own kin?

At what point does "avoiding the appearance of conflict" just become another way to control the narrative?