India took on Afghanistan for the first time on Indian soil for a T20 series starting from 11th January. On their first clash at Mohali, Dube and Axar shined for team Leads India to Victory and aided in winning the match with 15 balls spare.
Earlier India won the toss and decided to bowl first. Rohit Sharma led this side after quite a long gap. The previous match he played was against England in the 2022 World Cup Semi-final where team India lost terribly.
Yashasvi Jaiswal was expected to play yesterday, but he suffered an injury before the start of the play. So Shubman Gill was added to the eleven. For Afghanistan Rahmat Shah made his debut. He was the oldest player to debut in a T20 for Afghanistan.
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Table of Contents
Challenging Kickoff For Afghanistan
Arshdeep Singh started the innings with a maiden for India. It was a sluggish start by Afghan batters but they managed somehow to not give their wickets early in the top and hit some boundaries in the powerplay. They gave 50+ runs partnership for the first wicket.
Axar Patel drew the first blood for India and dismissed Rahmanullah Gurbaz. He scored 23 runs from 28 balls at a strike rate of 82.14. Earlier Dube dropped a chance given by Ibrahim Zadran, but he managed to take his wicket later by himself.
Rahmat Shah didn’t have a memorable debut. He just scored three runs and was played on when tried to hit Axar Patel. Afghanistan was 57-3 at the halfway stage of the innings. Then came Mohammad Nabi to the crease. He and Omarzai played steadily and the runs started to flow at regular intervals.
Mohammad Nabi played some explosive shots. He took on the Indian bowlers and hit three sixes and two boundaries and managed to score 42 off 27 at a strike rate of 155.55 and missed the chance to score a half-century. He fell for Mukesh Kumar who also took his partner Omarzai’s wicket.
In the end, Najibullah Zadran played a handy cameo and the Afghan ended their innings at 158-5. They scored a hundred runs in the last 10 overs, thanks to Nabi and his explosive shots. From the Indian side, Axar and Mukesh picked up two wickets each and Dube picked a wicket while Arshdeep bowled economically. Ravi Bishnoi and Washington Sunder were expensive.
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Bizzare Start For India
India started their innings with Rohit and Gill as openers. In the 2nd ball of the innings, there was a mix-up between Rohit and Gill in the middle and it ended up as the 1st wicket of team India and it was the skipper Rohit. Obviously, it was Gill’s fault. He was not listening to his partner’s call instead, he was seeing the ball which is a schoolboy error.
Then Tilak Varma teamed up with Gill. Gill was dealing only with boundaries. He timed the ball quite exceptionally. On the other end, Tilak was taking his time initially and hit some boundaries now and then. Gill fell for Mujeeb‘s brilliance. He scored a handy 23 off 12 with 5 boundaries in it. Dube joined Tilak in the middle.
Dube started to show his power-hitting skills as soon as the spinner arrived. He started with Nabi in the 7th over and there is no stopping him afterward. Alike Gill, Tilak Varma too failed to convert his good start. He was sent to the pavilion by Gulbadin’s exceptional catch.
Jitesh Sharma joined Dube in the middle. He was as explosive as Dube. Both of them destroyed Afghanistan’s bowling. The slower ball ploy didn’t work for both of them, they were comfortable with that and sent the balls over the ropes. They added 44 runs for the 4th wicket partnership. Then Jitesh fell for Mujeeb’s short ball. He scored 31 off 20 balls and managed to hit 5 boundaries in it.
Rinku Singh joined Dube in the middle. But on the other end, no one could stop Dube. He scored his 2nd fifty of his career in 38 balls. Rinku hit 2 boundaries and India inched closer to the finish line. In the end, Dube finished with a six followed by four, and made sure of the victory. India won the first match by 6 wickets and Dube won the Man of the Match award for his heroics with the bat and a handy wicket with the ball.
Conclusion
Afghanistan had never won a match against India. If they wanted to win they had to stop making silly errors in the field and contain the excess runs. They have to improve their fielding to stand a chance against a team like India. Even India’s fielding worked only bits and pieces the other day. But they still won because of the poor fielding by Afghans. Let’s see what will they do in the second contest of the series on 14th January in Indore.
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