South Africa vs Afghanistan
The excellent performance of the Afghanistan cricket team continues in the year 2024. Afghanistan performed brilliantly in the T20 World Cup 2024 this year and reached the semi-finals. In this tournament, the Afghan team created a sensation in the cricket world by defeating Australia. Now once again the Afghan team has created history by making a big upset. In fact, in the first match of the ODI series played in Sharjah, the Afghan team created a new record by defeating the strong South African team. Bowling first, Afghanistan bundled out South Africa for just 106 runs on the basis of brilliant bowling. In response, Afghanistan achieved the target of 107 runs in 26 overs by losing 4 wickets.
Afghan spin showed its power
Fazhlaq Farooqi and Allah Ghazanfar played an important role in this historic victory of Afghanistan. Omarzai took 4 wickets for 35 runs in 7 overs while 18-year-old Ghazanfar did the great feat of taking 3 wickets in his third ODI match. While chasing the target, Azmatullah Omarzai and Gulbadin Naib played a wonderful game and returned after giving victory to the team. Omarzai played an unbeaten innings of 25 runs and Gulbadin played an unbeaten innings of 34 runs.
Afghanistan’s bowlers sent 7 South African batsmen to the pavilion within 10 overs. In this way, South Africa became the team to lose the most number of wickets in the first 10 overs of an ODI innings. Earlier, Afghanistan had lost 7 wickets in the first 10 overs against Zimbabwe in Sharjah in 2016.
Teams losing the most wickets in the first 10 overs of an innings in ODIs
- 7 – Afghanistan vs Zimbabwe, Sharjah, 2016
- 7 – South Africa vs Afghanistan, Sharjah, 2024
Afghan team created a record
With the defeat of South Africa, a big record was registered in the name of the Afghan team. Actually, for the first time, the Afghanistan team has been successful in defeating South Africa in international cricket. Before this, Afghanistan has done the great feat of defeating England, Pakistan, New Zealand, Australia. With defeating South Africa, Afghanistan has done the feat of defeating all the full member nations teams in white ball cricket except India. The Afghanistan team has not been able to defeat Team India in any format so far. The 12 full member nations of ICC include India, South Africa, Australia, England, New Zealand, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
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