Afghanistan knock Hong Kong out of WT20

“There is no plan, only to hit every ball to the boundary.”

This is Mohammad Shahzad’s philosophy, distilled after he made an audacious T20 century against Zimbabwe in January.

He speaks, and plays, like a devotee of Virender Sehwag, who famously described his batting philosophy thus: “You just react to the ball... If the ball is there to be hit, you just hit it.”

Few players in world cricket today are truer to Sehwag’s mantra than Shahzad. He ostentatiously models himself on another wicket-keeper batsman with the initials MS: Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Shahzad is rather chunkier and more prone to histrionics. Few have reacted to a T20 half-century in the manner of Shahzad against Scotland three days ago: he removed his helmet and lifted his arms aloft in triumph, like a gladiator glorying in victory.

He would have made a century, he later said, but “It was too hot.”

WATCH: Shahzad powers Afghanistan to victory

Shahzad is what might politely be termed a high maintenance cricketer. He is chunky and bombastic, with more time for self-regard than fitness training.

A dressing room comprising 11 men with his personality would surely combust.

No shot seems beyond him. Good length balls are carved with ferocious speed down the ground or, with the helicopter shot modeled on Dhoni, swatted to midwicket.

Any width is seized upon, normally by carving the ball over third man. Straight balls are there to be flicked to midwicket or scooped over the wicketkeeper. Spinners exist to be belted out of the ground.

In Afghanistan’s first ODI against a Test team, when they played Pakistan in 2012, Shahzad greeted Saeed Ajmal, fresh from eviscerating England’s batting, with a reverse sweep over cover for six.

The thrill has not just been in Shahzad’s performance, but in his personal story. Like most of the Afghan team, the seeds of Shahzad’s career were sown in refugee camps in Peshawar.

Afghanistan's cricket superstar // ICC

Here Shahzad would play tape-ball cricket in the streets or, when a ball could not be located, a stick and plastic bags would be wrapped up to make one.

“It was the only thing for the youth in those days to do - either we sleep or play cricket,” Shahzad later said. “It was everything. I slept with thoughts of cricket.”

The journey led him to the Afghan team in 2009. He looted hundreds in his second and third ODIs, against Netherlands and Canada, and hit a stupendous 214 not out as Afghanistan chased down 494 in the fourth innings to win an Intercontinental Cup game against Canada.

He played with the same spirit when Afghanistan faced Test opposition in the World T20 in 2010, 2012 and 2014, but rather less impressive results.

A particularly egregious shot against Bangladesh in the 2014 WT20 – Shahzad was dismissed attempting to hit the very first ball out of Dhaka – triggered Afghanistan’s collapse to 72 all out. Soon after he was dropped.

When Afghanistan made their debut in the 2015 World Cup, Shahzad, one of Afghanistan’s first cricket stars, was in Kabul rather than Australia and New Zealand.

“He is just too unfit,” Siddarth Monga wrote for The Cricket Monthly. “This is the new Afghanistan. They have decided their instinctive game, based on passion and natural talent, has brought them as far as it can.”

But it turned out Afghanistan still needed Shahzad after all.

Since being recalled to the team - Inzaman-ul-Haq, Afghanistan’s coach since last October, is particularly well placed to recognise that girth can be married with on-field performance - Shahzad has been comfortably Afghanistan’s best batsman.

Each of the 102 runs he has mustered in the World T20 have been thrilling triumphs of talent and chutzaph. Now, he need only plunder Zimbabwe once more to lift Afghanistan to the Super 10s.