As Naveen-ul-Haq trapped Mustafizur Rahman plumb in front, Rashid Khan sank to his knees before Karim Janat lifted him back on his feet. Gulbadin Naib, whose theatrics added to the drama, offered sajdaa. Their head coach Jonathan Trott and bowling coach Dwayne Bravo, who have seen far bigger wins, embraced each other near the boundary ropes with tears ready to roll down any moment. If not for his sore knee, Rahmanullah Gurbaz would have rushed onto the field as soon as Bangladesh lost. Instead, he sat alone in the dressing room with eyes soaked in tears of joy.
In the stands of the Arnos Vale ground in Kingstown, St Vincent and Grenadines, the locals danced as if victory was theirs. After a four and a half-hour slug fest, for the majority of which Afghanistan were playing catch-up, they pulled off a thrilling 8-run win (DLS) over Bangladesh that put them in the semifinals of the T20 World Cup for the first time.
History, with its shorthand notes in Trott’s little black diary, was written right to left in Dari and Pashto on cricket’s tapestry in Afghan sweat, tears and pearls of laughter for those watching it unfold. Australians who weren’t at the scene, will stay unseen, evicted from the T20 World Cup by the Afghans. On India’s famous 1983 World Cup anniversary, Afghanistan played out a modern-day fairytale and will back themselves to beat South Africa in semis.
It was during the 2010 T20 World Cup in the Caribbean that Afghanistan made its entry onto the world stage. With tall fast bowlers sporting war paint bringing out theatrical celebrations, and players emerging out of refugee camps in Pakistan, it didn’t take long for Afghanistan to become the darlings of world cricket.
Wherever they went, they were the story to be heard. Even as they kept producing magical wrist-spinners after wrist-spinners, their struggles off the field have been the most sought after tale. But 14 years later, it is their skills and their admiring fighting spirit that would be the talk of the cricketing world as they are set to face South Africa in the first semi-final on Thursday.
“It’s a dream for us to be in the semi-finals. The way we started the tournament, the belief came when we beat New Zealand. It’s unbelievable. We thought 130-135 was a good score but we fell 15 runs short. We knew they would come hard at us and we knew that is what we could take advantage of. We didn’t need to do anything extra, just be clear in our plans. We wanted to make people back home happy, that was the discussion we had and everyone did a wonderful job,” Rashid said.
Thanks to Australia’s defeat at the hands of India earlier in the day, Afghanistan knew they could cap off a historic night. A win against Bangladesh is all that they needed. The net run-rate equation was Bangladesh’s headache. But still, the magnitude of what awaited them should they cross over the line, clearly seemed to weigh them down especially when Afghanistan won the toss and batted first.
And once out in the middle, even if they had lost, nobody could have accused them of not trying. Truth be told, they tried way too much with their batsmen looking to hit the ball long and hard on a pitch that was seldom easy to score off. In what has been a forgetful campaign for Bangladesh, the one encouraging sign has been the performance of their seamers, who once again bowled the right lines.
On these pitches, unless batsmen get closer to the pitch of the ball, the big hits have been hard to pull-off. And the Bangladesh attack, fully aware of it, kept dragging back the length as Afghanistan’s batsmen kept swinging their bats and kept missing. Out of the 120 balls they faced and made 115/5, there were 66 dot balls, that’s 11 full overs.
In the first 10 overs alone, openers Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran consumed 30 dot balls. Time and again they went for the cross-batted shots that had no space on this surface. But the good thing was, they had wickets in hand to press on the accelerator. However the loss of Azmatullah Omarzai, Gulbadin and Gurbaz in the space of three overs would put an end to it before Rashid Khan’s cameo gave them something to bowl at.
Thanks to a paltry target, Bangladesh too entered the picture for the race to the semi-finals. For Bangladesh to make the semifinals, they had to overhaul the target in 12.1 overs and they went in pursuit of it as the powerplay fetched them 46 runs for the loss of three wickets. Despite losing wickets, Bangladesh were showing no signs of slowing down, as they went about at over 7 runs an over with Litton Das dropping anchor at one end.
Like his cameo with the bat, the 11th over bowled by Rashid proved to be the game changing one. With 37 needed off 13 deliveries to qualify, Rashid brought himself on. For Bangladesh this was a make or break moment and by the end of that over where Rashid dismissed Mahmudullah and Rishad Hossain off successive deliveries, Afghanistan sniffed a win.
As the rain drops picked up pace, DLS got clowning around with nerves, there was even room for theatrics with Gulbadin dramatically and suddenly going down in a heap at first slip, as Trott signalled to slow things down. A short rain-break later, there was more drama and twists in the middle. With Bangladesh seven down, Afghanistan managed to dry the boundaries as the run-rate which was over 7 an over came down to 3.40 between the 11-15 overs. Still with Litton in the middle, Bangladesh were getting closer in singles and twos. Afghanistan needed wickets.
Thanks to the slowness of this pitch, unless batsmen went for an aggressive shot, wickets were hard to come by. With Tanzim Hasan Sakib and Litton defending the spinners successfully, Rashid brought on Gulbadin, who had bowled them to victory against Australia. And here trotting away as if nothing had happened a few minutes back, off his second delivery of the night, he made Tanzim go for a horizontal-bat shot and the resultant top-edge found Mohammad Nabi at cover to push Bangladesh 8 wickets down.
With 12 needed off as many deliveries, Naveen returned to bowl the most important over in Afghanistan’s history as the drizzle was picking up pace. After conceding three runs off the first three balls, he bowled a slower one that Taskin Ahmed managed to drag back onto the stumps. Off his next, Naveen was straight as an arrow to pin Mustafizur plumb in front as Afghanistan made it to the last four, cheered on by the whole cricketing world.