One of the reasons for them to be confident is because the match is going to be played in Chennai where spinners play a huge role.
Afghanistan created the biggest and the first upset of the tournament by beating England in Delhi and are high on confidence when they take on New Zealand in Chennai.
One of the reasons for them to be confident is because the match is going to be played in Chennai where spinners play a huge role. The Chennai pitch is known to assist spinners and that same pitch Indian spinners had got the better of the Australian batsman to bowl them out for just 199.
Afghanistan has three quality spinners in Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rehman and Mohammed Nabi who picked 8 wickets out of the 10 English batsmen and had complete control of the game. And if Rahmullah Gurbaz can once again set the platform for them along with Ibrahim Zadran, the rest of Afghanistan’s batsman needs to capitalize and not collapse like the way they did against England after being 114 for no loss to slump to 150/4, it was due to the date hitting by Rashid Khan and Mujeeb ur Rehman and smart batting by Ikram Alikhi they managed to post a decent score.
Mind you New Zealand also has good spinners In Mitchell Santener and Ish Sodhi and Trent Boult they have the best left-arm swing bowler and are the team to beat this World Cup with three clinical wins against England, Netherlands and Bangladesh. It needs to be seen if Afghanistan can batsman bat well to score a decent total to defend against the Kiwi batters who all are in form but as Rashid Khan mentioned, they are here not to just create upset but to win more matches against big teams and show the world they can play the 50 overs game and not just regarded as a T20 specialist format team.
The author of this article is Anis Sajan, cricket enthusiast and prominent businessman who serves as Vice Chairman, Danube Group.
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