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T20 World Cup | Burdened with chaos in their backyard, Afghanistan aim to keep focus on 22-yards

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In a short span of time, Afghanistan have displayed the calibre that the side has and they were marching ahead with a zeal and in an incredible curve of ascendency. Just when their stocks were rising across the cricketing world, a major political turnaround struck the country and changed a lot of things. From witnessing total chaos in the nation to the future of Afghanistan cricket in a dilemma, a lot happened in the past few months. 

But here they are up for the challenge, probably the biggest till date. 

The Afghan team will now be up against the big guys in the business in the T20 World Cup. 

Afghanistan made an automatic qualification to the Super 12s round and now have their work cut out with Pakistan, New Zealand and India in their group. Apart from these formidable sides, Afghanistan will also have Scotland and Namibia in their group who have qualified through the initial round. 

The team comprises of some world-class and prominent names in the unit which include the likes of Rashid Khan, Mohammad Nabi, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Asghar Afghan who have been playing a lot of franchise cricket around the globe. 

Spin maestro Rashid Khan

The Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan has become one of the lethal bowlers in world cricket. The right-arm bowler has the ability to deceive the batters with his spin and wrong-uns. Moreover, Rashid will be coming into the tournament with some recent experience of playing in the UAE as he was a part of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The cash-rich league’s second half of this year’s edition was played in UAE. 

He had picked up wickets consistently for his IPL franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) during the course of the tournament and also had a good time at the office in the warm-up match against West Indies. Rashid didn't pick any wickets in this match but returned with an economical spell of 0/14 in three overs as Afghanistan clinched a 56-run victory. 

Moreover, he is pretty handy with the bat too and can chip in with some runs at a brisk pace at the end of the innings. 

Can the batters continue form?

Afghanistan consists of some of the finest and aggressive batsmen in their ranks. Hazratullah Zazai who played a few games in the Pakistan Super League earlier this year but stamped authority with the bat for Peshawar Zalmi and struck three fifties in five matches that he featured in. The opener then played the two practice matches against South Africa and West Indies before the start of the World Cup. 

While he failed to open his account against the Proteas, Zazai hammered a 35-ball 56 against the Caribbean side which proved to be instrumental in their dominating win. 

The wicket-keeper batsman Mohammad Shahzad also has a bit of a similar story where he was among runs during the T20 matches that he featured in before coming into the tournament. Just like Zazai, Shahzad also failed to trouble the scorers against South Africa but scored a fine half-century against West Indies. 

Asghar Afghan, who is probably one of the most experienced lads in the side hasn’t really had a great time in the recent past in the T20s. In the last five matches that he has played in the shorter format, he has only crossed the 20-run mark twice while has a couple of single-digit scores as well which he scored during the two warm-up matches. 

But with the kind of experience that he has, the Afghanistan side can still bank upon the right-hander to get back in form. 

The only question here that arises is whether these batters will be able to carry their form against the big guns. Well, the team management and the think tank would surely be dependent on these batsmen to put up a fight with the bat along with the likes of Nabi, Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Najibullah Zadran. 

Banking on the experience

Afghanistan would have a lot of dependence on players like Rashid Khan, Nabi and Asghar Afghan. The amount of cricket that these players have played. While they have the ability to unveil some significant performance on the field, they have a lot to offer when the think tank sits to make strategies and plans against the opponents. 

While Nabi is leading the side in this tournament, both Rashid and Asghar Afghan have the experience of captaincy which would be helpful in making plans on the field. 

SQUAD: Mohammad Nabi (c), Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Karim Janat, Hazratullah Zazai, Gulbadin Naib, Usman Ghani, Naveen ul Haq, Asghar Afghan, Hamid Hassan, Najibullah Zadran, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Mohammad Shahzad (wk), Fareed Ahmad Malik.

Probable XI: Hazratullah Zazai, Mohammad Shahzad (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Najibullah Zadran, Asghar Afghan, Mohammad Nabi (c), Gulbadin Naib, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb ur Rahman, Naveen ul Haq, Hamid Hassan

Afghanistan will begin the campaign on October 25 against Scotland in Sharjah and will travel to Dubai to lock horns with Pakistan on October 29. The Afghan side will then take on Namibia in Abu Dhabi on October 31 and India and New Zealand on November 3 and 7 respectively at the same venue. 

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T20 World Cup | Babar, Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi embarrass India to correct Pakistan's World Cup history

For all the punditry harping India as the most formidable side of the tournament and all the memes and jokes about Pakistan’s World Cup history against them, there was the trio of Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan and Shaheen Shah Afridi to rewrite the history and change the outlook of India. India were rocked early but they showed resilience to be not out of the game completely by posting 151 runs on the board—a par score on Dubai pitch where batting for some unknown reasons has been tricky. Also add to that Pakistan’s characteristics with the bat in their hands, especially while chasing, and India would have believed they had a good chance of winning the game. However, the dynamic duo of Babar and Rizwan, who was more dynamic of the duo to put Indians under enormous pressure from the first over itself with two boundaries. The six that he hit off Bhuvneshwar Kumar was with so much ease, that the Inzamam Ul Haq would have got nostalgic watching it somewhere from Pakistan. India played a pace-heavy five-man bowling attack and backed the duo of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Shami to get the best out of the pitch and the new ball. Kohli would have hoped both of them would extract something on the line of what Shaheen Afridi extracted to leave them in disbelief, but it wasn’t to be. It wasn’t to be and India were chasing the leather from the very first over and the assurance of Babar and audacity of Rizwan meant they were never going to get back in the game easily. None of their tricks, such as the “mystery spin” of Varun Chakaravarthy and controlled line and length of Ravindra Jadeja and yorkers of Jasprit Bumrah worked successfully and they could not muster even a single wicket to avoid an embarrassment. Shami was too wayward both in his line and length and never respected the fielding arrangement Kohli had for him and it was only fitting that Ruzwan smashed him in the 18th over to finish off the game. Bhuvneshwar Kumar found the swing on the very first ball of the over but did not help his case by first becoming too ambitious in search of glory ball and then following those full deliveries with short of length stuffs that Rizwan feasted upon. Kohli was quick to bring Bumrah and Varun into the attack in the third and fourth over, but there was no respite from Rizwan and Babar as they waited for their opportunity to pounce on. They never went desperate and banked on India to make mistakes in desperation. Earlier, when Babar won the toss, he sent India in to bat first in what appeared to be a tricky call on the face of it. However, by the end of the powerplay, it looked like a masterstroke that he took having known the strength of his side. Shaheen wiped out the head of the Indian batting order with a booming inswinging yorker that Rohit Sharma had no answer of and then followed with an unplayable inswing length ball that cut KL Rahul into half and sneaked through his bat and pad to disturb the stumps and India’s ambitions of posting a good total. Playing true to his reputation, Suryakumar Yadav arrived at the crease with a lot of swagger and confidence and treated balls on their merits instead of getting bogged down by the quality of bowling and game situations. He was looking ominous at one end and hit some delightful strokes before edging one through to Rizwan, which he took spectacularly to hint that the night was to be Pakistan’s chance of rewriting the history. Virat Kohli found himself in the zone and upped his game once again in the face of severe adversity and hit Shaheen for a majestic six that could well end up as the shot of the tournament. He was watchful and used his tried and tested methods of strike rotation to keep the momentum going for India. Rishabh Pant struggled to get balls of the square but once he got going, he played two signature one-handed shots off Hasan Ali that sailed over square leg and long on to give Indian fans reasons to cheer. However, his ambitions were short-lived and he picked the wrong ball off Shadab Khan to try and deposit over midwicket and a top edge ended his promising innings just the worst time for India. Ravindra Jadeja was promoted ahead of Hardik Pandya to keep the left hand - right-hand combination but the all-rounder struggled to pick the perfect mixture of rapid and slower balls of Hasan Ali and Harris Rauf and ended up choking his skipper who got through to another fifty against Pakistan in a t20 world cup game. It was his sixth score of fifty or more against Pakistan but the fall of the wicket at the other end and lack of big shots meant his half-century could not provide more than stability to the Indian batting unit and they could barely cross the 150-run mark. Pakistan outclassed India from the word go and ended up thumping them by a margin of 10 wickets to rewrite history. India were left with some harsh lessons and they have a week’s time to ponder over what went wrong in the game before an all-important game against the New Zealand side, whom they have never defeated in the history of the T20 World Cup. On the other hand, Pakistan were ecstatic and are up and running the group with the high chance of topping the group alongside one of New Zealand or India.