File image of Indian Cricket Team
IND vs AFG T20 World Cup 2021 Highlights: After two humiliating defeats in the T20 World Cup 2021, Virat Kohli led Indian side finally tasted success as they piped Afghanistan by 66 runs on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi. Being put to bat first, openers Rohit Sharma (74 off 47 balls) and KL Rahul (69 off 48 balls) gave India a solid start which was further accelerated by quick cameos from Rishabh Pant (27 off 13 balls) and Hardik Pandya (35 off 13). The firing batting performance enabled the men in blue to register a 210-run total on the board.
In the chase Afghanistan kept losing wickets at regular intervals. Ravi Ashwin's made a worthwhile comeback with his impressive bowling figures 4-0-14-2. Barring Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur, the rest of the bowling unit was quite economical with the ball.
Virat Kohli: Much better wicket to be fair. We spoke about the fact that in the other games, if we just had two overs of free-flowing batting, then that sends a message to the opposition that we are going to put you under the pump. When we do that, we know how we can play. Sometimes, you do fall to the pressure and have to accept that. T20 cricket is a very instinctive game, in batting, bowling and decision-making. We do make decisions on the go. Top three is mostly settled unless situations like today when the openers batted all the way through and the power-hitters were ready. We don't always decide early to go hard, but we do back ourselves and when we do get going, we know what we can do. Well, yes that is the plan (to keep playing this way) but as I said, sometimes you just give in to the pressure. The other teams bowled really well to us. Yes, it (net run rate) was to be honest. We are always positive, and so were thinking about it. The return of Ash (is the biggest positive), we saw him doing well in the IPL and when he does this, we get control in the middle overs. That's what I'm most pleased about (today).
Mohammad Nabi: We usually bat first, we tried to chase due to the dew. Also the wicket looked really good. Yeah, there wasn't much dew, but the wicket played really good. India batted really well, and put us under pressure. Not always, we try to rotate strike a bit too. Today we didn't do well enough but we lost early wickets and that put us under pressure. Hopefully, we can win our last game.
Rohit Sharma | Player of the match | 74(47): The idea was to go after it, and get off to a good start, which didn't happen in the first two games and lay the platform for the others. Exceptional batting from Rahul, and that partnership was vital. We were prepared to field first, and it was a good pitch to bat on. Getting to a respectable total was important, and the NRR could come into play so we had to win by a good margin, so glad we got that. Today it was necessary to get off to a good start, and that's not my natural game - I usually like to get in. So I made an effort to settle in, play cricketing shots, and put up a big total.
