Image Credit- Getty
With the ball in hand, Mohammad Nabi balanced on his
tiptoes just inside the long-on boundary. Indeed, he’d pulled in a clean, and
more significantly, legal, catch. With nine balls left in the Sri Lankan
innings and more damage to be done, Angelo Mathews had to be replaced.
A few overs before, Maheesh Theekshana had picked up a
yorker-gone-wrong from Azmatullah Omarzai and whacked it through the covers,
causing the ball to burst under his hands and past his legs. The shot was hit
with such force that Afghanistan lost four runs due to Nabi’s just marginally
delayed responses, and Sri Lanka’s bottom order was moving away. However, they
were only able to reach 241, and part of that was due to ground fielding in
Afghanistan.
Even on a decent surface, Afghanistan should have
prioritised giving themselves less work to do. They have chased more runs than
this, both in this tournament (283 against Pakistan in their last encounter)
and against Sri Lanka (269 in Hambantota in June). It had to be, too. Since
Gurbaz’s success as a keeper does not necessarily translate to his role as an
opener—he scored half-centuries during this tournament while not having to wear
a glove, and today he was out for a duck. Without the support of a solid
opening stand, his reliable opening partner Ibrahim Zadran held things together
until the 17th over, at which point it was up to the middle-order, which has
historically struggled, to do the job.
This is significant since, in the two previous World
Cup victories for Afghanistan, their batting was predicated on a
century-opening stand rather than the fact that they lack the manpower to
accomplish the task. Their two greatest ODI run scorers of all time are Rahmat
Shah and Mohammad Nabi, despite the fact that Nabi hasn’t played his best or
hasn’t been required to. Three other players, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Azmatullah
Omarzai, and Ikram Alikhil, have each struck half-centuries in the competition
thus far.
They have shown a feeling of stability in their
approach in games where they have scored 270 or more, even when they went
boundary-less in the chase between the 10th and 20th over. Zadran fell at that
point, but instead of a mini-collapse, it turned into a mini-vigil.
For coach Jonathan Trott, it was proof that the method
is working, especially when the team is chasing.
“When you’re batting first, it’s a case of
communication and seeing where you can get but when you are chasing the target
never changes. So there’s a focus on breaking it down into smaller targets
because if you break it down it seems a lot more manageable,” he said at
the post-match press conference. “There’s also a feel-good factor if you
know you are on the right track.”
Afghanistan played cautious cricket, which may not
have been glamorous during a period when big hits garner the loudest applause,
but it was nevertheless exciting for Trott, who is witnessing the adoption of a
new strategy.
Even without complex maths, you’d think that Omarzai’s
hitting the winning runs in 46 overs—16 balls faster than the whiteboard
projected—signals a convincing triumph. Another all-encompassing triumph.
Afghanistan had already achieved their most successful
fifty-over World Cup campaign prior to this game, even if the standard was
poor. They had only triumphed once in their two prior meetings, and that
success came against Scotland in 2015. They had lost all nine of their 2019
games. Here, they defeated Full Members twice as many times as they defeated
Sri Lanka. They are now in fifth position in the points table after tripling
it. They still have a chance to make it to the semifinals and have games against
South Africa, Australia, and the Netherlands.