A whirlwind over by Shaheen Shah Afridi gave early break through, he picked two wickets in his first over of Afghanistan’s skipper Gulbadin Naib and Hashmatullah Shahidi on the very next ball.
Rahmat Shah tried to score a decent score after early dismissals but Imad Wasim broke his momentum. Babar Azam took an easy catch on his delivery over the mid-wicket. He scored 35 off 43 balls.
Toss
Aghanistan have won the toss and elected to bat first against Pakistan.
Sarfaraz Ahmed: “We wanted to bat first but unfortunately toss is not in our hands. Our bowling line-up is bowling well so hopefully they’ll restrict them. Our momentum is very high, but we’re focusing on this match, not focusing too far. We’re going with the same team.
Gulbadin Naib: The wicket looks good, it’s a sunny day. The wicket will help the spinners in the second innings. Pakistan is a good side, they’ve played plenty of good games. We beat them in the warm-up so we’ll put our 100 percent in this game. Hamid is back in the side, in place of Dawlat.
Teams
Pakistan: 1 Imam-ul-Haq, 2 Fakhar Zaman, 3 Babar Azam, 4 Mohammad Hafeez, 5 Haris Sohail, 6 Sarfaraz Ahmed (capt & wk), 7 Imad Wasim, 8 Shadab Khan, 9 Mohammad Amir, 10 Wahab Riaz, 11 Shaheen Afridi
Afghanistan: 1 Gulbadin Naib (capt), 2 Rahmat Shah, 3 Hashmatullah Shahidi, 4 Asghar Afghan, 5 Samiullah Shinwari, 6 Mohammad Nabi, 7 Najibullah Zadran, 8 Ikram Alikhil (wk), 9 Rashid Khan, 10 Hamid Hassan, 11 Mujeeb Ur Rahman
Preview
Pakistan cannot afford any more slip-ups, needing to win their final two matches to retain a realistic chance of reaching the semi-finals after a slow start to the tournament.
Afghanistan, appearing in just their second World Cup since their debut in 2015, are playing for pride after losing all seven of their matches so far.