How injured Rashid guided Afghans to historic series win against Proteas

Afghanistan ace spin bowling all-rounder Rashid Khan made his comeback to long-format cricket with the ODI series against South Africa in the UAE. Though he wasn’t required much in the first game, in the second one, he took it upon himself to guide his team to a historic series win, their first ever against a Test-playing nation apart from Bangladesh, Ireland and Zimbabwe. 

Rashid, who has been suffering from back issues, pulled a hamstring while batting. With Afghanistan having already secured the first ODI, they needed to defend to 311 and Rashid was going to play a big part in it. 

"I got a hamstring [injury], I had it a month before as well, quite unlucky but I tried my best to stay on the ground till the end, tried my best to do as much for the team as I can,” birthday boy Rashid was quoted as saying after his team won the game by a whopping 177 runs, their biggest ODI win by runs. 

So what made Rashid stay on the field despite the injury and bowl his side to a win? "Big opportunity for us as a team you know, to win the series against a big team and that's what I had in my mind: my contribution will be the key so I have to go and stay till the end,” he said. 

At one stage, the South Africans were 85/1 during the chase before the 26-year-old turned on his spin magic. Rashid got Tony de Zorzi as his first wicket and then went on to take four more as the Proteas were bundled out for 134, losing their last eight wickets for 36 runs inside 11.5 overs. 

Rashid had earlier pulled out of the last week of The Hundred and retired home to try and get fit for Afghanistan’s premier domestic tournament, the Shpageeza Cricket League. He missed that and also the one-off Test against New Zealand, which was eventually washed out. The Nangarhar-born had gone under the knife after the end of the ODI World Cup 2023 to sort the back problem and remained out of action for four months straight. 

Earlier, Rahmanullah Gurbaz smashed his seventh ODI ton (105 off 110 balls), the most by any Afghan batter in ODI cricket history and took his team to a huge total of 311/8. He was well supported by Azmatullah Omarzai who scored unbeaten 86 off just 50 balls.

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