Pakistan’s up-and-down Cricket World Cup campaign continued today as they were beaten by Afghanistan in Chennai. Babar Azam won the toss and elected to bat first but his team failed to assert their dominance on the associate nation.
Afghanistan’s quartet of spin options restricted Pakistan to ones and twos while continuously taking wickets through the middle of the innings. Babar scored a fine 74 and some late innings hitting from Shadab Khan and Iftikhar Ahmed took the team to 282-7 at the halfway stage.
It seemed to be a challenging total but the Afghanistan batters made light work of it. Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran put on 130 for the first wicket with both openers scoring over 50 before being dismissed. Rahmat Shah and Hashmatullah Shahidi then combined through the middle overs, taking advantage of loose bowling and poor fielding to guide the team over the line with an over to spare.
Relive the updates from Chennai plus get the latest Cricket World Cup odds and tips right here:
