Twenty20 coaches urge their players to break a match down into 240 individual events and for Afghanistan, whose hunt for a major scalp in limited-overs cricket continues, the 18th over against England in Delhi featured one such sliding-doors moment.
The third ball from Shapoor Zadran, their aggressive left-arm quick, speared back into Moeen Ali’s front leg at knee-roll height. Umpire Sundaram Ravi declined the vociferous one-man appeal. A leg-bye was pilfered by the batsmen. The game moved on.
But replays that followed showed not just a half-decent shout for lbw from the giant bowler but one sitting towards the plumb end of the spectrum, as three reds appeared on Hawk-Eye for a ball that, had pad not intervened, was destined to peg back leg stump.
Had Ravi’s finger gone up, England would have been 102 for eight and, one might suggest, significantly less likely to have scored as many as the 40 runs that turned their total from lamentable to competitive in the space of 16 deliveries, as Moeen and has partner David Willey tore into the Afghanistan attack.
The momentum shifted dramatically, with Afghanistan’s batsmen, thereafter, collapsing to 13 for three inside three overs to derail their chase from the outset, before getting to within 16 runs of the target but scarcely threatening it.
Since they had earlier reduced England to 57 for six in the 10th over, this fixture will instead go down as an opportunity missed. Afghanistan’s head coach, Inzamam-ul-Haq, and their captain, Asghar Stanikzai, must now pick up their players for their final fixture against West Indies in Nagpur on Sunday.
Team talks that follow over the coming days will have plenty of positive things to draw on, at least, with this latest defeat representing a third such near-miss for Afghanistan against an established side in the Super 10 stage and their closest yet.
Against Sri Lanka and South Africa their performance in the field let them down. And yet here they fielded more tigerishly and bowled with greater street-smarts, their former captain, Mohammad Nabi, leading the way in both disciplines.
Until his introduction in the sixth over England had, bar the loss of Jason Roy to a dance down the wicket, been enjoying the expected full member cruise at the Feroz Shah Kotla, slickly dispatching the bad balls and defending the good ones to reach an unruffled 41 for one.
Nabi, so central to Afghanistan’s 13-year journey up the international ladder, would flip the situation on its head in six deliveries, however, with James Vince bunting back a return catch, Eoin Morgan leaving a straight one first-up and Joe Root run out.
The 17-year-old leg-spinner, Rashid Khan, looks a bowler of immense promise – albeit one with the looks of a veteran – and now has nine wickets in the tournament after matching Nabi’s two for 17 by removing Ben Stokes, bowled, and Chris Jordan, caught and bowled.
Such chaos for England against a supposed lesser nation – hardly unprecedented – was not simply down to their own failings; a more seasoned opponent would likely have closed out the game from such an impressive start.
Herein lies the rub for Stanikzai’s side, who are the outstanding Associate team at present, having spent the time in between World Twenty20s chalking up 13 wins from 16 against their peers to reach ninth in the rankings, although they find themselves excluded from the top table in terms of fixtures.
They have experienced only three bilateral Twenty20s against the current top eight and with the next World T20 in four years’ time – and the next 50-over World Cup in 2019 an exclusive 10-team affair – this needs to improve dramatically if their cricket is to do the same.
When Afghanistan get so close – perhaps just an umpire’s miscalculation from causing a dramatic upset in Delhi – one hopes it is not fear among cricket’s established elite that is keeping them at arm’s length.
