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ICC World Cup 2019, India vs Afghanistan: India ready to rock Rashid Khan & Co.
India will face off against a struggling Afghanistan side in their fifth encounter at the 2019 World Cup on Saturday.
On his good days, Rashid Khan doesn’t bowl at the batsmen. He mesmerises them. The sway of the hair. The tug of his sleeve. The whizzing run-up. The whirring arm. The unreadable delivery and the eventual glint in his wide eyes. On his good days, there are few better spinners in the world. And riding on a wave of such good days, Afghanistan’s cricket team rapidly succeeded from being midcard to the main event.
Unfortunately for Rashid, there haven’t been too many good days for him at the World Cup, and Afghanistan has suffered rather severely.
Perhaps it is the pressure of playing in cricket’s biggest event or perhaps the batsmen have figured him out, because here in England and Wales, Rashid has seldom mesmerised. He was hit by the Australians and he was hit by the South Africans. But those blemishes didn’t seem like blemishes after he was hit by the English batsmen for 110 runs in nine overs—the most expensive bowling figures in World Cup history.
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Because that beating went down in Aghanistan’s previous game—effectively knocking them out of the World Cup with five losses from as many games— Rashid’s post-beating health was the talking point in both press conferences on the eve of their match against India.
“I saw him today, and he’s totally different (from a few days ago). So this is the good thing for me and for the team,” said Gulbadin Naib, Afghanistan captain. “England played him really well. But Rashid, he has the strongest mind and can learn everything very quickly. He also learns from mistakes.”
To give the media an idea of just how good Rashid can be, and just why he was not too long ago the best ranked ODI bowler in the world (he is currently No.3), Naib claimed that even in the nets he and other Afghani batsmen struggle to pick him—this despite having played him day in and day out for many a year. “Rashid Khan is not an easy bowler. We can’t play him in the nets after knowing him, so he’s that difficult,” said Naib.
The claim was cross-checked during India’s pre-match presser with Vijay Shankar, Rashid’s IPL team-mate at Sunrisers Hyderabad, and he agreed.
“He’s definitely one of the best bowlers right now in limited overs, and he has done well. For me, having played with him for a couple of years, it’s very important for me to pick things from him, like whenever I bat against him in the nets, I try and pick his variations,” said Shankar. “So, for me, it is about how I play against him tomorrow. That will be the key.”
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This, then, was how Shankar inadvertently solved the mystery surrounding India’s batting order for the Afghanistan game. Two days before the match, Shankar was hit on the toe by a Jasprit Bumrah yorker and was found limping the following day, which of course made all witnesses assume he was likely to be replaced by either Dinesh Karthik or the newest member of India’s squad, Rishabh Pant.
But with Shankar playing, India’s eleven will have the same look to it as it did for the Pakistan game, except for fast bowler Mohammed Shami coming in for the injured Bhuvneshwar Kumar. But when Shankar was explicitly asked for the composition of the team, he laughed and said: “That even I don’t know sir. I also will find out only tomorrow morning.”
With or without Shankar, India have little to worry about, and not just because the opposition is Afghanistan. Virat Kohli’s side have not lost a match so far and dropped just one point to rain. And on Friday, only Shankar came to the ground, specifically to address the media. The others were at the team hotel by the Southampton docks, presumably relaxing.
But when Shankar was asked if he and his team-mates were taking it a little easier because their upcoming match was against the weakest side in this tournament, he of course delivered a politically correct answer.
“No, it’s not about against whom we’re playing. I think it’s about how we play as individuals,” said Shankar.
“We always look to get better. That is the only motive that we have. So, we’ll just look to get better at the ground tomorrow, and it doesn’t matter against whom we’re playing.”
From the outside, the India-Afghanistan fixture has the makings of the most one-sided match in a tournament full of one-sided matches. The best versus the worst and all that. But maybe Shankar does have a point.
Maybe when the teams line up on the field, the Indians really won’t look at the Afghans as pushovers. For, in their ranks is the finest leg-spinner in the world.
And when he has a good day—much overdue for him in this World Cup—Afghanistan usually does too.
