India Vs Afghanistan isn’t a match which every Indian is pretty excited to see in comparison to an India Vs Pakistan match. Well, last night it was proved wrong when India Vs Afghanistan clearly stole the show with their awesome performance in all the departments i.e. bowling, batting and especially fielding.
To start off India rested half a dozen of their main players in hope that Afghanistan was a weak team and whatever team they sent in would be able to beat them. If that was what they thought then they were wrong.
Indian Team
The Indian team involved K.L. Rahul, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Kartik, Manish Pandey, M.S. Dhoni ( captain), Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Siddharth Kaul, Kuldeep Yadav, Khalil Ahmed and Deepak Chahar.
Afghanistan Team
Mohammad Shehzad, Javed Ahmadi, Rahmat, Shahidi, Asgar Afghan (captain), Naib, Nabi, Najibullah, Rashid Khan, Aftab Alam
Afghanistan Batting
The Afghanistan team won the toss and decided to bat first. This turned out a good move as the opener Ahmad Shahzad single-handily destructed the Indian bowlers by hammering a solid 124 runs of just 116 balls. The other batsmen except Mohammad Nabi who scored more than 50 runs failed to impress as the captain Asgar Afghan got bowled on the first delivery he faced by Kuldeep Yadav. With the likes of Shahzad and Nabi Afghanistan was able to score a total of 252 for a loss of 8 wickets.
Indian Bowling
In the bowling department it was the spinners who once again took the lead. Jadeja with a 3-46 out of his 10 overs and Kuldeep with 2-36 out of his 10 made sure the Afghanistan batsmen didn’t get off limits. The pacers Deepak Chahar and Khalil Ahmed took 1 wicket each while Kaul remained wicket-less.
Indian Batting
India got off to wonderful start as both openers Rayudu and Rahul scored more than 50 runs. Then the batting stood still as due to a wrong review decision by Rahul whole team suffered. Dhoni and Kartik were given out while they were not out. Kartik got out making 44 while Dhoni at 8. Pandey threw his wicket easily at 8 runs.
It was then Jadeja who took India to the end. He partnered with Jadhav, Kuldeep and Chahar to at-least tie the match. India needed 1 off 2 balls after which Jadeja hit the ball in the air leading to him being caught out and the match resulting in a tie
Hands off it can be said that it was the most intense and action filled match of the Asia Cup till now. An ODI being tied is something we rarely see nowadays.
