Rashid Khan reveals Afghanistan’s strategy to strangle Bangladesh

Afghanistan are currently playing a three-match T20I series versus Bangladesh at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Dehradun. They thumped the visitors in the first match and followed it up with another resounding performance to win the series with one match remaining. In the second match, Asghar Stanikzai’s men found themselves in quite a bit of trouble during their run-chase.

The needed 20 runs from the last couple of overs. To make things worse, in the 18th over, they lost the wicket of Samiullah Shenwari who played a gutsy knock of 49 runs. However, Mohammad Nabi spanked Rubel Hossain for 20 runs in the penultimate over to help his team snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In the first innings, Rashid Khan’s brilliance with the ball restricted Bangladesh to 134.

“We wanted to keep things simple”- Rashid Khan

Rashid Khan dished out a spell of 4-0-12-4 and took the sting out of Shakib Al Hasan’s men. He dismissed the skipper, Tamim Iqbal and Mosaddek Hossain in the 16th over to tighten Afghanistan’s grip in the match. Tamim top-scored with 43 runs and was arguably Bangladesh’s most formidable batsman. Nevertheless, following his dismissal, the innings fell away for the visitors.

Quite deservingly, he was adjudged as the Player of the Match for his match-winning spell. “This is what the team expects (from me). This is the plan given to me, to bowl in the middle and end overs. I was mentally ready, and wanted to bowl in the good-length areas,” a jubilated Rashid was quoted as saying in the post-match press conference.

“It was crucial, the wickets of Shakib (Al Hasan), Tamim (Iqbal), Mosaddek (Hossain) and Soumya (Sarkar). They are key players. We know how good they are, so we wanted to keep things simple and focus on the basics,” the teenager added.

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