Rashid Khan stood with his arms out, his back arched,
and his eyes fixed on the night sky as the ball slipped past Mark Wood’s bat
and into the stumps. It was a memorable moment that will be felt across Delhi,
India, and much beyond: Afghanistan had not only defeated, but thrashed, the
world champions.
This was a fearless and unrestrained team’s
performance, attacking first with the bat and subsequently the ball. In their
previous 17 World Cup games, Afghanistan had only ever won once, a one-wicket
victory over Scotland eight years prior. They were a team with nothing to lose
and everything to gain.
India has evolved into Afghanistan’s home away from
home in the midst of political upheaval and humanitarian disasters. This was
their most well-known sporting event, taking place in front of approximately
25,000 spectators in a city with a sizable Afghan population. As Afghan Jalebi
played on the PA system, several of them danced and waved flags of Afghanistan.
This was a return to the dark ages for England. They
chose the incorrect team by adding a seamer on a pitch that was dominated by
spin. From the opening ball, which Chris Woakes blasted down the leg side and
Jos Buttler allowed to slip through his legs for five wides, they were
careless. Additionally, they pushed and prodded their way to a 69-run defeat by
batting aimlessly.
England’s early elimination from the 2015 World Cup
served as the catalyst for the white-ball revolution, which was typified by
attacking batting, embracing risk, and the ability to put the onus of pressure
on the opponent rather than themselves. But if anyone in Delhi on Sunday
represented those concepts, it was Rahmanullah Gurbaz.
He pulled Woakes over the short leg-side boundary for
six on the sixth legal ball he faced. In the 57 balls he faced, he smashed four
sixes—heaving Sam Curran over square leg, upper-cutting Wood over deep third,
and slog-sweeping Adil Rashid over midwicket—for a total of four sixes. In the
31st over, England only managed to hit one and were already six wickets down.
There were sumptuous boundaries too, not least a brace
off Woakes through the off side. His early six forced Woakes to bowl wide
outside the off stump and protect the short leg-side boundary; instead, Gurbaz
pumped his through cover and sliced him through point. “He put us under a
lot of pressure,” Buttler conceded. Forget Bazball: this was Gurbazball.
England chose to bowl first on a pitch that played
much more like a classic Feroz Shah Kotla surface than the two offered up
earlier in the tournament and got slower and lower in the absence of dew,
showing how startled they were by the weather. However, great teams should be
able to adapt, and England is too frequently misled in this way.
However, this was not a night to celebrate England’s
loss. It was the night that Afghanistan realised their potential and turned
their promise into a tangible outcome that was worth more than two points. This
was a rare instance of happiness for a nation in sorrow for the victims of an
earthquake whose name has been linked to war, hardship, instability, and loss.