England’s Moeen Ali, left, and Eoin Morgan, center, celebrate the fall of an Afghan wicket while playing against Afghanistan during the World T20 match at the Feroz Shah…
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England will now need to beat Sri Lanka in their final group match and hope their net run rate is sufficient to see them through to the semi-finals should there be a tie at the top.
England will again look to Joe Root to lead the way with the bat after he steered their record-breaking run chase of 230 against the Proteas on Friday.
Asked about his former team, who lost to leaders West Indies in their second match, he added: “They are not flowing with confidence, they have gone through a fair bit of change”.
Rashid said Ali’s knock under pressure made all the difference. We let them in by under-performing with the bat but I thought our bowling was outstanding. Willey also got stuck into Hamza’s left-arm spin as the duo managed to score 25 runs in the penultimate over.
“The executions of our plans were off by a long way”.
“We didn’t really adapt to the surface with our batting performance, we spoke about it before and how we would have to, but putting that into action we didn’t quite get that right”.
“In practice – and you’d expect me to say this – he’s striking the ball very well”, he said.
England captain Eoin Morgan is not underestimating Afghanistan ahead of the World Twenty20 Group 1 game on Wednesday.
Jason Roy struggled for timing early on, departing for five when missing a Hamza Hotak quicker delivery, but James Vince – who replaced the injured Alex Hales – and Joe Root hit some eye-catching boundaries.
First Hampshire batsman Vince offered a return catch to off-spinner Mohammad Nabi (2-17) – 42-2.
The rot didn’t stop there – Jos Buttler (seven) was brilliantly caught by Nabi, diving forward at short extra cover, off Samiullah Shenwari before Stokes (seven) dragged a googly from 17-year-old leg-spinner Rashid Khan (2-17) onto his stumps, falling on to his backside in the process.
Shapoor Zadran bowled the last over of the England innings as they ended up on 142 runs, Moeen Ali top scoring with 41 off 33 balls.
It was then nearly all over for Afghanistan, as two English spinners did a good job for England in getting a double breakthrough. “He played according to the situation”, said Rashid. Willey then carried that momentum in to the first over of the Afghan innings, trapping the batting side’s danger man Mohammad Shahzad lbw for 4 after just 3 balls.
For Afghanistan, the tournament has been a story of so close but yet so far.
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Shenwari (22) and Shafiqullah (35 not out) tried to breathe some life into the chase with a few lusty blows in the finale but could do little to alter the outcome. The match is expected to be a one-sided match as the England team is much more experienced and has more talented players as compared to Afghanistan.
