With heavyweights New Zealand incurring three losses consecutively, the window of opportunity has opened for both teams contesting today to make their mark and possibly reach the semi-finals. It is Afghanistan taking on Netherlands at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow.
The toss has been taken, as Netherlands won the toss and chose to bat first.
FOLLOW THE LIVE ACTION HERE: Netherlands vs Afghanistan Live Update, World Cup 2023
Afghanistan’s World Cup campaign started with back-to-back heavy defeats, but they have won three of their next four matches. All their wins have come against teams that have won the World Cup once. Today’s challenge should look relatively easier for them, but they will be wary of the Dutch.
Netherlands are the only team so far in this competition to register a win against the rampaging South Africans. They also come into this match on the back of an impressive 87-run victory over Bangladesh. This is almost a must-win game for the Dutch and a few results have to go their way as well.
ICC World Cup: Schedule | Results | Points Table | Most Runs | Most Wickets
With everything to play for and all at stake, this promises to be an action-packed encounter for all to witness.
Captain’s Comments:
Scott Edwards (NED): We’ll bat first. It has worked well for us. The wicket looks decent. Hopefully put on the runs and defend it. We have made one change. That’s something we’ve spoken about, our top-order needs to make more runs. We’ve got Barresi coming up to the top and Vikramjit is missing out. We are still fighting for the spot in the semi-final. We have to play a lot of good cricket. As a group, that (CT) is not something we are focusing on. That comes with potentially playing food cricket.
Hasmatullah Shahidi (AFG): We wanted to bat, but that doesn’t matter. We need to play 100 overs of good cricket. It’ll spin. We are trying to play good cricket. We are going with four spinners. Noor Ahmad is in for Naveen. A lot of support, in this WC, everyone’s praying for us. We are happy for that. The focus will be on today’s game.
Playing XIs:
Netherlands
Wesley Barresi, Max ODowd, Colin Ackermann, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Scott Edwards(w/c), Bas de Leede, Saqib Zulfiqar, Logan van Beek, Roelof van der Merwe, Aryan Dutt, Paul van Meekeren
Afghanistan
Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi(c), Azmatullah Omarzai, Ikram Alikhil(w), Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Noor Ahmad
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