Cricket News Asia Cup 2023

'What a clinical performance' - Twitter booming as India annihilate Afghanistan by a huge margin in Asia Cup 2022

This was an absolutely clinical performance from India with bat, ball and in the field and there was a lot of positives to take.

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Akshay
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India

India- Source (Twitter)

India India- Source (Twitter)

The 5th match of the Asia Cup 2022 super-four stage kicked off with India taking on Afghanistan in the dead rubber clash on Thursday. The match was played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. Afghanistan won the toss and chose to bowl first.

On a pitch that was slightly tacky, the Indian batters in Virat Kohli and KL Rahul were watchful at the start of the innings and rotated the strike well to ensure that the number of dots remains less. Rahul, who was the skipper for this game, looked in great form, scoring a beautiful 62 off 41 balls with 6 fours and 2 sixes to help India race to 119 in 12.3 overs.

Virat Kohli was very watchful in the beginning and took his time to get going at the start but once he got used to the pace of the pitch, he was carting the spinners with aplomb and used his feet very well against them. He was particularly severe on Rashid and Mujeeb. As the innings progressed, he tore into the Afghan pace attack as well.

He got to the century with a well timed six off Fazalhaq Farooqi. There was happiness and joy on his face as his teammates applauded. The stadium went into ruptures as he scored his 71st century which also was his maiden T20I century. This glorious innings contained 12 fours and 6 sixes, and the 122 runs came off just 61 balls.

This allowed India to put up a massive total of 212-2 on the board. In the second innings, Afghanistan knew that they had to make the powerplay count to have a chance in this game. However, it did not transpire as Bhuvneshwar Kumar ran riot over the Afghan batsman and reduced them to 9-4 in his 2 over spell.

He accounted for the wickets of Zazai, Gurbaz, Karim Janat and Najibullah Zadran and then came back and picked up Omarzai with a good delivery to get a five-for. Arshdeep Singh picked up the wicket of Nabi leg-before.

Deepak Hooda came into the attack and picked up the wicket of the dangerous Rashid Khan with a shortish delivery. Then Mujeeb was bowled by Ashwin off a carrom ball.  In the end, India beat Afghanistan by 101 runs

Twitter was fully abuzz, let us take a look at the reactions here:

 

Cricket News Asia Cup 2022