PRE MATCH ANALYSIS
Follow UsIn a quest to feature in their maiden Youth World Cup final, Afghanistan are slotted to lock horns against England, one of the two unbeaten teams (the other one is India) in the ongoing ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean. After winning that nerve-racking Quarter-Final against Sri Lanka, the morals are sky-high in the Afghan camp. However, to topple a team like England, Suliman Safi’s side requires more than just high spirits.
And in such crunch situations, at any level, Afghanistan always tend to back their biggest strength — the spinners.
With as many as nine slow bowling options in their 19-member squad (including the reserves), Afghanistan are well capable of tying a web around the opponent batters with different variety of spin. In fact, it is because of the efforts of the likes of left-arm wrist-spinner Noor Ahmad, playing his second Under-19 World Cup and right-arm leg-spinner Izharulhaq Naveed, the Afghan bowling has been a talking point in this competition. Together the two have taken 15 wickets in four outings. Along with them, there is left-arm orthodox Nangeyalia Kharote, who has also chipped in with seven scalps.
Hence, Afghanistan have a minimum of 30 overs of quality spin to test the England batters, who are still relatively inexperienced in handling this sort of bowling. "We have a good bowling attack and our spin is very strong, If we get a good total on the board, we feel we can defend it."
There was no beating around the bush when the Afghan skipper was asked about their gameplan for this much-awaited fixture. Though, while talking about their counterplan to tackle the in-form English bowling attack, the confidence in Safi's voice did not seem to be at the same level.
After missing out on two warm-up games due to their late arrival in the Caribbean, the Afghan batters haven't had much to cheer about. They were bowled out for 200 against PNG in their first game and recently the Sri Lankan pacers exposed their vulnerability against fast bowling. And England have the ideal bowling attack for this opponent, with left-arm quick Joshua Boyden being the spearhead with 12 wickets to his name in this World Cup.
So, if the Afghan batters can somehow find a way to put some runs on the board, their bowling will certainly come into play. And the England skipper Tom Prest knows that quite well.
“Facing spin has been a challenge for a lot of us. We went to Sri Lanka pre-Christmas so we’ve done a lot of work on it, using our feet and playing different shots and sweeps. We know Afghanistan have a few good spinners. So we’ve been preparing as well as we can," Prest said in his pre-match media interaction.
During their training session on Monday at the Sir Vivian Richards stadium in Antigua, the English batters were seen brushing up their skills against slow bowlers. With just a few spinners available in their camp, one of the lads had to chip in to bowl some part-time left-arm wrist-spin to feed the batters.
“We’ve watched quite a bit of footage from their bowlers. They’ve got a left-arm mystery spinner and a right-arm leg-spinner, so we’ve been preparing for that. One of the lads has started bowling some left-arm spin in the nets, so we’ve been facing a bit of that.
"They’ve obviously played really well to get to the semi-finals. They had that tight game against Sri Lanka, so we’ve been trying to get as much footage as possible before the game," Prest added further.
England's performance, especially in the batting, has been quite ruthless in this tournament so far. Skipper Prest has led them from the front with 275 runs in four innings with an astounding average of 91.66. Not only that, their top-three run-getters in this World Cup — Prest, William Luxton, Jacob Bethell — all have strike rates over 100.
“We’ve been brought up to try and take the positive approach, whether that’s with bat, ball or in the field. The way Jacob Bethell went out [scored 88 off 42] in that last game against South Africa was the epitome of that [England chased 210 in just 31.2 overs]. Hopefully, we can string a couple more of those performances together and play that positive brand of cricket we’ve seen the England senior team do."
Well, it seems Eoin Morgan's team has some sort of influence on these young English cricketers. Now, it will be quite interesting to notice how well these colts perform against a kind of bowling, which is still a bit of mystery for them.
