ONE of modern cricket’s great entertainers wants to come to Australia this summer. The question is, does anyone want him to play for them?

Earlier this week Pakistan veteran Shahid Afridi told Cricket Australia’s website he’s keen to return to the Big Bash League after a five-year absence, having appeared in the opening edition of the competition in 2011-12.

Last BBL season was a West Indian summer, with Andre Russell, Dwayne Bravo and, dare we say it, Chris Gayle providing plenty of spectacular moments.

Yet when it comes to pure drama few can match Afridi. Over the course of two decades the spin-bowling all-rounder has seen and done it all – usually at a million miles per hour and with not enough tactical thinking.

Beyond his on-field deeds a player of Afridi’s standing is sure to put bums on seats, especially with a substantial Pakistani population in Sydney.

Even if you aren’t Pakistani and don’t know much about Afridi, there are plenty of reasons why you should want him in your Big Bash team.

We look at a few reasons to love the man they call ‘Boom Boom’.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HE’S GOING TO PRODUCE

Nothing in Pakistani cricket is predictable and Afridi is the embodiment of this.

He’s just as likely to produce a moment of brilliance with bat, ball or in the field as he is a moment of sheer madness.

This is a man that has been caught on camera biting a cricket ball – he was banned for two matches for ball-tampering – but has also captained his country in all three formats, officially or unofficially retired from various forms of the game seven times, scored a century off 37 balls (against Sri Lanka in his first one-day international innings, in 1996) and once took 7-12 in a one-day international (against West Indies in 2013).

Earlier this year he was even served with a legal notice for allegedly “committing treason”. The crime? He said he felt more loved in India than he was in Pakistan.

HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S GOING TO PRODUCE

Even Afridi freely admits he no longer tries to control what he does out on the field, especially with bat in hand. He takes ‘play your natural game’ pretty much as far as a professional cricketer can – and then takes it a bit further.

“I used to get very frustrated and whenever I went in to bat I was in two minds,” Afridi has said in an interview. “Any shot I played, I would do with fear in my heart.

“With that pressure, I batted for five to seven years. But eventually I took a call and said: ‘If I play, I will play the way I want to, not how anyone else tells me to.’”

WHEN HIS BATTING IS ON THE MARK, IT’S INCREDIBLE

There’s no denying that Afridi has wasted at least some of his remarkable batting talents.

A typical Afridi innings, especially in Twenty20 cricket, lasts about ten minutes and includes at least one six, yet is usually over before he reaches 20 runs.

This is how Afridi’s knock against Australia at this year’s World Twenty20 – which could well have been his final match for Pakistan – was summed up by The Guardian’s Andy Bull.

“So, in only seven balls, Afridi seemed to cycle through all the many stages a batsman might go through in the course of a long innings, from cautious beginnings through canny accumulation to masterful domination and, at last, a fatal mistake,” Bull wrote.

Yet on the odd occasion Afridi gets it right, he’s almost unstoppable. This was a far more frequent occurrence early in his career, starting with that incredible 37-ball hundred in his first ODI innings. Overall he scored five Test hundreds, six ODI tons and four T20I half-centuries.

However the ability for a match-turning innings is still there, as was on show a few days before his anticlimactic end against Australia, when he smashed 49 off just 19 balls against Bangladesh.

Afridi’s career strike rate in T20 Internationals is 150.75, bettered only by Aussie all-rounder Glenn Maxwell. Afridi has played almost three times as many T20Is as Maxwell.

HE’S STILL GENUINE QUALITY WITH THE BALL

His batting may have waned in recent years, but Afridi’s canny leg-spin remains an asset.

Afridi is Hampshire’s highest wicket-taker in the ongoing NatWest T20 Blast (six at 20.00) and its second most economic (7.50).

He still sits fourth on the International Cricket Council’s bowler rankings in Twenty20 International cricket, and has taken more wickets than any player in the format at that level (97 at 24.35)

He has the eighth most wickets in T20 cricket at all levels (236 at 21.93), and with a career economy of 6.68, he’s more than capable of tying up an end.

He’s proven he can do it in the BBL too, finishing eighth on the wicket-taking charts (10 at 20.80) for the Melbourne Renegades in 2011-12.

LAST CHANCE TO SEE HIM PLAY

Pakistan may be touring Australia in the summer, but Afridi won’t be playing, having retired from both one-day international and Test cricket. And the idea of retiring from T20I cricket has also crossed his mind.

During the World Twenty20 in March, he announced that Pakistan’s final group game against Australia could be his last for the country. In the end he chose to relinquish his captaincy and remain available for selection instead.

However, Pakistan is not scheduled to tour Australia again until the World T20 arrives on these shores in 2020. He is long odds to be in that side, with the country’s new chief selector, Inzamam-ul-Haq, leaving the veteran out of Pakistan’s squad for its upcoming tour of England.

Already 36, Afridi is into the twilight years of his career. If he’s not in this summer’s BBL, we may never see him play in Australia again.

PASSIONATE

Before Imran Tahir’s joyous sprints, no one celebrated a wicket with more vigour than Afridi, whose iconic star pose is almost as famous as his explosive batting.

And he doesn’t mind a sledge either.

In 2003 he was banned from the Sharjah Cup by his own cricket board, who found him guilty of sledging India’s Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag during a World Cup match that year.

That hasn’t put the Pakistani off verbal stoushes though, having had run-ins with Shane Warne, Gautam Gambhir and Mahela Jayawardene in the years since.

Afridi is as competitive and passionate as they get.