Afghanistan Zindabad!

Today’s match at the 2023 ODI Cricket World Cup was between Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The winners would keep alive their hopes of claiming a slot in the semi-finals. This post looks back at the match.

THE PRELIMINARIES

Afghanistan won the toss and elected to bowl. Their skipper, Hashmatullah Shahidi, expressed very positive reasons for doing so – no “don’t really know why we are bowling first” from him! They made one change from their previous outing, left arm pacer Fazalhaq Farooqi replacing left arm wrist spinner Noor Ahmad in the line up. Sri Lanka brought Dimuth Karunaratne into their XI in place of Kusal Perera.

THE SRI LANKAN INNINGS

Afghanistan bowled well, especially Fazalhaq Farooqi, who recorded the outstanding figures of 4-34 from his 10 overs. Seam bowling all rounder Azmatullah Omarzai had 1-37 from seven overs of right arm medium-fast, Rashid Khan claimed a scalp in his 1o0th ODI appearance, a career landmark reached at the age of 25. From a Sri Lankan perspective it was a tale of jobs being half done – six batters scored at least 22, but no one managed more than 46. The result was a final total of 241 from 49.3 overs, modest, but not necessarily indefensible – both yesterday and the day before totals of 229 had proved well beyond the chasing sides.

THE AFGHANISTAN INNINGS

Rahmanullah Gurbaz was out for a duck, but Ibrahim Zadran and Rahmat Shah put on 73 for the second wicket, and then Ibrahim Zadran and Hashmatullah Shahidi added a further 58 for the third. At 131-3, with Zadran just out for 62, Sri Lanka still had hopes, but Azmatullah Omarzai soon extinguished those. The fourth wicket pair were still together, entirely unruffled, when the scores drew level. Azmatullah Omarzai was almost caught in the deep at that point, but the chance went down, and the batters took the winning single with 4.4 overs to spare. Azmatullah Omarzai had scored 73* (63) and Hashmatullah Shahidi 58* (74), and their unbroken stand was worth 111. Somewhat unfortunately for Omarzai, who had an outstanding match, the Player of the Match award went to Fazalhaq Farooqi for a great display of left arm pace bowling. This was Afghanistan’s third win of the tournament, and the third time they had beaten a former winner of the competition (Pakistan 1992, England 2019, Sri Lanka 1996). It keeps their hopes of a semi-final slot alive, and if they get that far it becomes a straight shoot out, with them needing two victories for the title. A win for them were it to happen (and I am not counting them out) would be a far more extraordinary story than Sri Lanka’s in 1996 was, and that result itself shocked a lot of pundits at the time. Every team has now played six matches, and the league table looks like this:

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off (remember to view any image at a larger size click on it)…