India defeated Afghanistan by eight wickets on Wednesday, October 11, at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi, carrying on their winning streak in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023. Afghanistan’s captain, Hashamatullah Shahidi, chose to bat first after winning the toss, and his team amassed 272/8 in the allowed 50 overs.
In response, India easily attained the mark in 35 overs thanks to a century from Rohit Sharma and a half-century from Virat Kohli. After going for a duck in the first game, Ishan Kishan (47 off 47) had a strong performance as he and Rohit accumulated 156 runs for the first wicket.
The game’s talking points are as follows:
The four-fer by Jasprit Bumrah
Jasprit Bumrah, a star speedster for India, proved he was up to the task when, in the seventh over, he struck once more with the new ball to dismiss Ibrahim Zadran. Mohammad Nabi (19 off 27), Najibullah Zadran (2 off 8), and Rashid Khan (16 off 12) were also dismissed by him, giving him statistics of 4/39 in 10 overs.
2. Rohit Sharma’s world-record outing
The Indian skipper was in commanding shape as he launched his attack right away with all guns blazing. Rohit produced a brilliant innings, scoring 131 off 84 balls while blasting 14 fours and five sixes. He broke numerous milestones throughout his performance, including the most hundreds in ODI World Cup history (7), the most sixes in international cricket (556), and the quickest century by an Indian in ODI World Cup (63 balls).
3. Virat Kohli prevents teasing of Naveen ul Haq by the Delhi audience.
As he teased Afghanistan seamer Naveen ul Haq, star India batter Virat Kohli once more demonstrated his amazing sportsmanship by asking his home audience to stop chanting his name. Notably, the two got into a physical fight in IPL 2023 Match 43 between Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG).
At Kohli’s home field, the crowd therefore eager to pick on Naveen. The famous India batter, though, asked his supporters to refrain from harassing the young Afghan player and was even seen joking about with Naveen.
Losing Captain, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Afghanistan said:
We had in mind that India’s batting lineup is long, 300 was on our mind but unfortunately we lost too many wickets. The surface was good. We wanted to score more runs and put pressure on the opposition. Back-to-back wickets was the reason we didn’t score more runs. After losing 3 wickets I was talking to Azmatullah – Don’t worry about dots, we will convert later. Our aim was to build a partnership. We have seven more games, looking forward to those games. Hopefully we learn from our mistakes and we will work on it.
Winning Captain and Player of the Match, Rohit Sharma said:
It was a good pitch to bat on, just backed myself to play my natural game. I knew once I got my eye in, the wicket was going to get easier for me. Something that I have been working on from a long time. It’s a special feeling to get a World Cup hundred. Really happy with that. Don’t want to think too much (scoring 7 hundreds in just three World Cups), I don’t want to lose my focus.
You need to make such things count. You gotta make it big. Some of it (the shots he plays) is premeditated. I let my instincts take over at times, sometimes it really works well. It’s my job to make sure to get those starts especially in run chases. That’s something I have done in the past and something I love doing. Sometimes it (attacking the bowlers) works, sometimes it doesn’t. Just need to keep doing it and keep putting oppositions under pressure going forward.
Was a good win for us, very important to get that momentum at the start of the tournament. It is about absorbing pressure and taking the right decision on the field. There will be a spell from the opposition where you will have to absorb pressure. Leading up to the tournament we had played such games. You have got players with different skill sets in our team. They bring different attributes of the game to the team and it puts you in good positions as a team when you have that.
We have got guys who can play fearless cricket with bat and guys who can absorb like the last game. (Asked about playing Pakistan and the talk around it) For us it’s crucial that we don’t worry about external factors and just look at things we can control. We just need to show up and do well. Things like what the pitch is like, what combo we can play is what we can control. What happens outside we won’t be worried about it. It’s just about focusing on what we can do as players and how we can perform.
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