T20 World Cup 2021 | New Zealand bury India’s hopes; seal professional win against Afghanistan

Kane Williamson-led team sealed their place in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup after defeating Afghanistan by 8 wickets in Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.

On a hot Sunday afternoon, New Zealand chased down a paltry 125 runs, courtesy of steady contributions from all of their batters in a sticky wicket. After a decent start from Martin Guptill (28 off 23) and Daryl Mitchell (17 off 12), it was the captain Kane Williamson, who took control of the scoring.

He anchored his way through the innings and scored 40 off 42 balls while building an important partnership of 68 runs with Devon Conway, who contributed 36 off 32 deliveries.

Both players saw through the danger overs of Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Rashid Khan and played the ball on merit. They punished short deliveries from the spinners, making sure that they were always on track with the run-rate.

Things could have been drastically different though if Hamid Hassan would have appealed on an absolute corker that seemed to have just missed Devon Conway’s bat en route to keeper Mohammad Shahzad in the 11th over of the game. 

Conway was on three runs at that point of time. Neither the bowler nor the keeper seemed to have known about the edge and ‘ultra-edge’ later covered the incident.

At the end, the Kiwis went comfortably over the line with 11 balls to spare.

Earlier in the day, the foundation was laid by the New Zealand pace trio of Adam Milne, Trent Boult and Tim Southee, who reduced the Afghan top order to 19-3 inside the powerplay.

They were very accurate with the short ball ploy slipping a full length here and there as a change up. Trent Boult was the wrecker in chief for the Kiwi side and removed key men - Hazratullah Zazai (2 off 4), Karim Janat, (2 off 2) and Najibullah Zadran (73 off 48) who was taking the game away from NZ.

Barring Mitchell Santner, who went for 27 runs off his 2 overs, all NZ bowlers were on the mark with their lengths and kept their economy rate below 6.5 RPO.

Tight lines and back of the length bowling meant that the Afghan bowlers, barring Najibullah Zadran, could not get away and kept falling like a pack of cards, desperately trying to play their shots.

The bowling unit was aided incredibly by the fielding effort from the players who saved several chances in the boundary ropes. 

With the win, NZ secured eight points to become the second team to qualify from Group 2. They will most likely qualify in second place for the semi-finals and would have to face England, who are looking like the team to beat at the moment.

Speaking after the game, Kane Williamson spoke highly about the effort his bowling unit put in to restrict the Afghan top order. He further stated that his team will be focused on their next assignment and acknowledged that England are a great side and it would be tough to beat them.