Afghan Voice Agency (AVA)_Monitoring, hanistan will look to make a statement after automatically securing a Super 12 spot on the back of their seventh-place finish in the last edition.
Now the national team will be eager to go one step further to make it to the semi-finals.
But the job is going to be extremely difficult as they are placed in a group consisting of teams like Australia, New Zealand and England.
They are yet to beat any of these three sides and might need to exceed their best to pull off a win at least against one of these three teams.
Afghanistan’s performance in the warm-up matches has however been inspiring.
Mohammad Nabi and his men defeated Bangladesh by 62 runs and posted a competitive total of 154/6 against Pakistan before the game got called off.
So, the entire group must be in pretty high spirits ahead of their opening match against England.
England meanwhile are coming into this tournament on the back of some mixed form.
They played 21 T20Is this year ahead of this mega event and won only 10 of those while losing as many games.
It won’t be completely fair to doubt their quality as a team, though, as they have chopped, changed and experimented to find their desired balance ahead of this mega event.
Key Players for Afghanistan
Mohammed Nabi: The experienced all-rounder is going to be the most crucial player for Afghanistan in this contest. He has been seen in excellent form in the warm-up games.
Nabi smashed an unbeaten 41 from 17 deliveries against Bangladesh and then went on to register bowling figures of 1/11 in three overs.
He played an even better knock against Pakistan as he made his way to an unbeaten 51 from just 37 deliveries to propel his side to a competitive total.
Rashid Khan: Rashid is the secret weapon used by the captain of the team in crunch situations. Rashid Khan has picked 118 wickets in 71 matches at 14.21 and an economy rate of 6.25. Rashid has picked 92 wickets for Adelaide Strikers at an average of 16.70 in Australia’s Big Bash League.
Rashid can also play handy cameos with the bat in Afghanistan’s lower middle order and up the scoring rate.
Rahmanullah Gurbaz: Gurbaz has been a prolific batter for Afghanistan in recent times. He has scored 297 runs in 14 innings at a strike rate of 136.87 in 2022.
Recently, he scored 84 off 47 balls against Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup. Gurbaz was declared fit to play for Afghanistan’s opening game after an injury scare propped up when he was hit on the left foot by Shaheen Afridi’s inswinging yorker earlier this week.
Watch Live
Don’t forget to tune in to Ariana Television at 15:30 today to watch this exciting match which will be broadcast live.
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