Beating the hosts by a large margin of 8 wickets plus nearly 10 overs, Afghanistan debuted their race in the Aisa Cup 2022 grand tonight. With this win, Afghanistan sat at the top of Group B with 5+ points and thumped Sri Lanka to the bottom with the same but negative points. Here’s how it went;
Sri Lanka Lost Badly to Afghanistan in Asia Cup 2022
Winning the toss and opting to bowl first, Afghanistan made their best start ever – by scraping Kusal Mendis and Charith Asalanka in the very first over. Fazalhaq Farooqi, the man behind these scalps has also bowled a maiden over in his next spell.
Though Sri Lanka lost their first three wickets in quick succession, they managed to pick up the pace with the help of Gunathilaka and Bhanuka Rajapaksa in the middle overs – until the Afghanistan spinners took the situation again into their hands.
With they all going so economical, Sri Lankan batsmen somehow managed to squeeze some important final runs from the pacers – Naveen ul Haq and Azmatullah. Well, even then, they barely passed the 100-run mark in their time. Overall, with the help of Karunaratne at the end, Lankans were able to set a meager target of 106 runs to the Afghans.
And this didn’t take the opponents any time to breach, as Afghanistan openers – Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Hazratullah Zazai made an opening stand of 83 runs in just 6 overs! While Gurbaz was bowled immediately after the powerplay, Zazai, along with a couple of other batsmen has done the job.
All the Sri Lankan bowlers, irrespective of their nature of bowling, were thrashed in any over they bowled and ended up giving away the match in just over 10 overs! For his beautiful bowling spell of 3.4-1-11-3, Fazalhaq Farooqi was given the man of the match award.