Netherlands lost the plot against Afghanistan through indecisive running between the wickets and handed themselves a defeat by seven wickets. Ikram Alikhil was involved in six of those dismissals either by inflicting run outs, taking sharp catches as well as engineering clean stumping.
Netherlands cashed the power play well
After winning the toss, Netherlands chose to bat on a seemingly better track. Although they lost Baressi early, some indisciplined bowling by Farooqi and Mujeeb helped them to cash on some free runs inside the power play. The game was quickly running out of their hands but they regrouped timely and went on to choke the Dutch batters. O’Dowd who was batting superbly until then took a chance on the arm of Azmat in order to steal a second run but eventually left stranded by inches short due a direct hit.
Top order got wiped out through electrifying ground fielding
The flood-gate was now open. Nabi kept on piling the pressure through relentless dot balls. Engelbretch, who was crawling, tried to steal a sharp single by smashing it straight into the hands of Rashid positioned at short mid-off. Ackerman, who was late to react, fell short of his crease once again due to a perfect throw back to the keeper. Ikram removed the bails in a flash. Scott Edwards while trying to sweep Nabi the next ball lost his crease and to his dismay Ikram removed the bails in a whisker.
Ikram was fantastic behind the stumps
Three back-to-back run outs broke the backbone of Netherlands top order and Bas de Leede couldn’t absorb the pressure for too long either. He nicked a straighter one from Nabi trying to steer it behind the square of off side and Ikram grabbed it sharply. Netherlands collapsed from 73/1 to 97/5 and the rest was just formality for the bowlers. Noor Ahmad was introduced to the attack from the opposite end from where Nabi was operating. He didn’t take long to get among the wickets. He dragged one quite outside the off stump and was snuffled up by Ikram again standing behind the stumps. The batter actually gave himself too much room to cut which led to this mistake.
Nabi and Noor cleaned up rest of the batters
The Dutch innings was going nowhere. In order to push the momentum Van Beek tried to use his feet against Nabi only to get foxed by the flight to give Ikram his fifth victim. Engelbretch who was rolling the scoreboard from one end completed his second fifty of the world cup. Sadly he couldn’t capitalize this start into a bigger score. Roelof called for another quick single by pushing it straight to Nabi standing at short mid-wicket. With a perfect throw back towards Ikram, Engelbretch was found short of his crease.
Gurbaz and Ibrahim left early
Roelof and Meekeren didn’t last long as Noor and Nabi wrapped up their painful stay by constantly attacking the stumps. Afghanistan was given a quite under par target of 180 to chase in 50 overs. Gurbaz and Ibrahim couldn’t deliver a rollicking start as one expects from them. Gurbaz feathered a fine nick to the keeper while trying to heave a pull to an angling down the leg delivery. Ibrahim, after surviving the power play, dragged one back on to the stumps in his quest to drive a loopy delivery from Roelof.
Rahmat, Shahidi and Omarzai steered the chase with ease
However seasoned pros Rahmat and Hashmat composed another significant 74 run stand between them to take Afghanistan to 129. Meanwhile Rahmat went past his third world cup half century. His innings was full of conventional class and timing. After crossing the milestone, Rahmat drove one uppishly back to the bowler to trigger his dismissal against the run of play. Azmat arrived and without any fuss started to rebuild the innings. With skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi he was rotating the strike nicely with occasional boundaries. There were no further hiccups and Afghanistan got over the line with 111 deliveries to spare.
Afghanistan cruised to their fourth World Cup victory
Hashmat reached his 19th ODI fifty while Azmat remained unbeaten on 31 with three boundaries. Mohammad Nabi got the player of the match award for his game changing efficient spell of 3/28. With four wins under the belt, Afghanistan have already made their World Cup presence memorable. On top of that they have also qualified into the next Champions Trophy which is like a cherry on top. With Australia to face next at Wankhede, Afghanistan should approach the game with a cool mind. The pressure will be completely on Australia to topple the rising Asian giants.