England go into their match against Afghanistan in Delhi with sky-high confidence after their record-breaking run chase win against South Africa on Friday.
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England faced Afghanistan in their third match of the World Twenty20 today, needing a win to stay on course for a semi-final place.
Afghanistan could be a tricky opposition, particularly after the impressive batting of Mohammad Shahzad and England would hope to safely negotiate an “unpredictable” opponent, as skipper Eoin Morgan conceded. Then, they somehow played “possibly” the match of the tournament to upstage South Africa and revive their campaign. “I think it is very important for the sport to grow”.
“He is our best player, a star, and will only get better – these are the best years of his life”.
But England’s seam bowling attack struggled badly as they allowed the Proteas to pile up 229-4, and they had to be rescued by a superb batting performance, most notably from Joe Root.
Afghanistan are virtually out of the ongoing ICC World Twenty20 after losing their opening two games against Sri Lanka and Australia but the Asghar Stanikzai-led side displayed great character and fighting spirit in both the defeats. “We can be as open minded as we can, we can talk about it and we can use other players and our backroom staff as a sounding board”. The guys are performing very well, they have played very good cricket. Tomorrow is a big game and we are certainly not taking Afghanistan for granted. There will definitely be pressure on England… It’s true we played good cricket as a team and we need ICC support in the upcoming World Cups.
The Afghan team’s progress in the last few years has been one of cricket’s feel-good stories but after the highs of competing in last year’s 50 over World Cup and the World T20, they have no immediate fixtures against major teams on the horizon once they leave India. So you can compare how competitive we are and what we can do if given a chance in future World Cups. But Afghanistan is a country of more than 30 million people where, according to Shir Agha Hamkar, cricket’s appeal is growing rapidly.
“And we are not focussing on net run rate or anything else apart from the win”. If you have your day, you might win a game.
Inzamam, for his part, backed the talent in his team, but stressed that they would need more opportunities to make the transition to the next level.
“In one way that is quite comforting the fact that there’s no stone that’s left unturned but we watched the early stages of the tournament and they played some really good cricket”.
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Possible team: Mohammad Shahzad (wk), Noor Ali Zadran, Asghar Stanikzai (capt), Gulbadin Naib, Mohammad Nabi, Shamiullah Shenwari, Najibullah Zadran, Rashid Khan, Dawlat Zadran, Amir Hamza, Shapoor Zadran.
