A touch of the village green came to the World Cup on Saturday, in Afghanistan’s quirky, cheerful and ultimately bootless performance against New Zealand. On a day when sunshine contended with squally showers, and Taunton hosted its first men’s ODI in 20 years, the Quantocks felt like the perfect rural backdrop for some over-optimistic batting – against a Kiwi attack that will certainly test more mature technique this tournament.
Aftab Alam – he of the 80s headband – took three wickets in the Kiwi reply, and there was another touch of eccentricity to proceedings as Martin Guptill looped an inside edge to backward point off the very first ball of their innings. He walked off the field smiling, sensing, perhaps, that this was a day for humorous happenings, rather than tragic ones. In the end, New Zealand made the 173 they needed in only 32.1 overs.
This was entertainment of the holiday kind, to be bracketed alongside the guy shredding on his electric cricket-bat guitar, or the volunteer juggling foam bats for kids behind the Ondaatje pavilion. At one stage, Gulbadin Naib’s men had lost four wickets for four runs, flinging the willow with an abandon as joyous as it was misguided. Only Hashmatullah Shahidi’s 59 showed any serious bent.
James Neesham, meanwhile, picked up five wickets for 31, the best figures of the World Cup so far, not to mention of his own professional career. He had talked candidly, in the run-up to this World Cup, of how close he came to quitting the game entirely in recent years. Dropped from the squad after the 2017 Champions Trophy, Neesham found himself trapped in a downward spiral, bitter and angry whenever he took to the field. It took 18 months – and some psychological counselling – to rediscover the pleasure in playing.
He has let go of his crippling perfectionism, and his role since his return in January has been one of support rather than stardom. His batting has only been needed three times in their last seven one-day games, and in his side’s otherwise miserly bowling performance against Bangladesh, his two overs of medium pace shed 24 runs. At Taunton, where his run-up almost seemed to begin at the sightscreen, he found extra rhythm and pace. “It was a different surface and perhaps suited him a little more, someone who runs in and hits the wicket hard,” his captain Kane Williamson mused. “He bowled some beautiful deliveries today.”
Neesham was helped in no small part by Lockie Ferguson’s thunderbolts at the other end. One of Ferguson’s four wickets was Rashid Khan, bowled when a nasty length ball ricocheted off his helmet. Rashid was sent for concussion tests and played no further part in the game, although the good news for Afghanistan was that he was not expected to need treatment.
There was a glorious glimpse, at the start of the match, of Afghanistan’s best side. Hazratullah came out swinging in the most literal sense: he took three consecutive fours off Matt Henry’s first over. Sometimes his hitting was art – a whip to fine leg off Ferguson’s first ball – and sometimes it was agriculture. Hoicking to deep-midwicket, he sent Colin de Grandhomme and Martin Guptill off on a collision course, as both men failed to reach the ball. Two balls later, he had three fielders converging on the same spot. They still all missed it.
At the other end, Noor Ali was unrolling deliciously wristy shots both sides of the wicket, and within 11 overs they had put together their team’s second highest partnership of the tournament. But Hazratullah’s dismissal, caught at backward point, contained a terrible inevitability, and by the time captain Gulbadin was out – struggling so hard to reach the ball that he was the last to realise he had edged it – Afghanistan had toppled from 66-0 to 70 for four.
Afghanistan’s batting has born a certain naivety throughout this World Cup – unsurprising given that many players have grown up with the six-and-out mentality of 10-over games. But it is an issue they will have to address if they aim to be in international cricket for a long time. It is possible that, arriving in England as everyone’s favourite second team, the players’ self-estimation has been raised unhelpfully high.
The expectations of their own fans have brought its own kind of pressure, and some team members have not learned that engaging with them on social media is not always healthy or necessary.
“If you play this kind of cricket you should play 50 overs,” was Gulbadin’s post-game verdict. “If you’re losing games, it’s really difficult in the dressing room, but I know my team-mates. We’re not losing one-sided matches. The morale is still high for the boys. We just need one good match.”