St Vincent: Afghanistan faced Australia in their second fixture of the Super 8 stage at the Arnos Vale stadium in St Vincent. Australia won the toss and decided to bowl first.
This match was very important for Afghanistan as a loss here would severely dampen their chances of qualification to the semi-finals. They got off to a flying start thanks to probably the best opening pair of the tournament, Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran. Both the batsman took the Australian bowlers head on and continued to play with their fearless approach.
Both of the openers smashed half-centuries and formed the biggest opening stand of the tournament so far at 118 runs before Gurbaz lost his wicket to Marcus Stoinis on 60 in the 16th over. However, Afghanistan wasn’t able to capitalize on the huge opening stand and the batsman who came after, kept on losing their wickets cheaply.
The Australian bowlers bowled brilliantly in the last few overs to restrict Afghanistan to 148/6 in 20 overs. Though this wasn’t a big score, but the Aussies knew that Afghanistan’s quality bowling attack can make it very hard for them to achieve this target.
The Australians couldn’t have hoped for a worse start to their innings as their star player, Travis Head got dismissed by Naveen-ul -Haq for a duck. Mitchell Marsh and David Warner also lost their wickets cheaply before Afghanistan’s nemesis, Glenn Maxwell came back to haunt them. Him along with Stoinis formed a decent partnership before the latter lost his wicket on 11 runs leaving Australia at 71/4 after 10.3 overs.
Maxwell smashed a brilliant half-century to keep Australia in the game, but he got no support whatsoever from the other end as the wickets kept on tumbling. Maxwell also lost his wicket in the 15th over to Gulbadin Naib which very much sealed Australia’s fate. The remaining 4 Australian batsmen lost their wickets cheaply as Afghanistan pulled off a miraculous 21-run victory by bowling out Australia for 127. This win also kept their semi-final hopes alive.
It was a brilliant bowling performance overall by Afghanistan but Naib stood out indeed. His magnificent spell of 4/20 in 4 overs earned him the man-of-the-match award. Naveen-ul-Haq also bowled a fantastic spell of 3/20 to help Afghanistan come out victorious. Now their semi-final hopes rest on their final Super 8 match against Bangladesh on Tuesday.
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