Afghanistan, India nail-biter ends in tie

A brilliant all-round effort helped the spirited Afghanistan cricketers to tie their last Super Four dead rubber against India played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium in UAE yesterday.

Afghanistan who had earlier beaten Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in their first-round match, however are out of a Friday’s final, having lost their first two Super Four matches to Bangladesh and Pakistan, but shocked the mighty Indians who were at one point racing to victory.

India needed 7 runs off the final over bowled by Rashid Khan with one wicket in hand but having put on the hard yards, Ravindra Jadeja hit the penultimate ball to the mid-wicket fielder erupting wild celebrations in the middle.

Chasing 253 to win, the second string Indian team, captained by M. S. Dhoni for the 200th time suffered a middle-order collapsed that saw them crashing to 166 for four after a century opening stand between Ambati Rayudu and K. L. Rahul by the 31st over.

Indian openers Rahul (60) and Rayudu (57) laid a solid stand of 110 to put the Afghans under tremendous pressure but both departed in quick succession, followed by the wickets of Dhoni (8) and Manish Pandey (8).

Both Rahul and Rayudu dominated the strong Afghan bowling attack early on before Mohmmad Nabi dismissed Rayudu for 57 off 49 balls ending the threatening stand.
He clobbered four boundaries and four sixes while Raul who made 60 before he was trapped leg-before by Rashid Khan.

Dinesh Karthik (44) and Kuldeep Yadav (19) put on 38 for the fifth wicket but both departed with India still needing 47 runs off the last 10 overs.

Deepak Chahar was cleaned up by seamer Aftab Alam to claim his second wicket to drag it to the wire.

Alam returned figures of two for 53 Rashid Khan two for 41 and Mohammad Nabi had two for 40.
India who had already qualified for Friday’s final made five changes to the playing XI to test their bench strength.

Skipper Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan sat out along with bowlers, Yuzvendra Chahal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah.

The star of the evening, however was the burley Afghan opener Mohammed Shahzad who lit up the dead ‘Super Four’ rubber with a scintillating batting effort to take Afghanistan to 252 for the loss of eight wickets.

The wicket-keeper batsman who reached his fifth international hundred and second against an ICC Full Member with a flick to the fine-leg boundary, hit a flurry of sixes and boundaries in his quick-fire innings of 124 that saw the men from the landlocked country setting a formidable target against the most consistent side of this year’s Asia Cup.
 
While the rest of the batsmen struggled against the Indian attack, Shahzad seems to be batting on a different track as he dominated the bowling hammering 11 fours and seven boundaries in his 117 ball knock.

He shared 65 for the opening wicket with Javed Ahmadi, but the latter managed just five runs off 30 deliveries, playing second fiddle to marauding Shahzad who was on a roll.
Afghans middle-order could not provide the support expected as wickets fell cheaply until Mohammad Nabi joined at the fall of Gulbadin Naib when the score was on 132 for five.  

But by then Shahzad has scored his century, entertaining the crowd with some brilliant power hitting. When Shahzad finally holed out to the long off-fielder ending his high-octane innings, he had scored 124 of the team’s score of 180 by the 38th over.  

Later, Mohammad Nabi hit brisk knock of 64 off 56 with four sixes and three boundaries to ensure that Afghanistan put up a competitive total.(Champika Fernando reporting from Dubai)