5th over: India 9-1 (Rahul 7, Kohli 1) So Afghanistan’s bowlers, far from being cowed by the battering they took from England, have bounced back and made a textbook start. Now they just need five more wickets to get down to India’s long tail.
Wicket! Sharma b Mujeeb 1 (India 7-1)
Beauty! Sharma, who never got going, is utterly bamboozled by Mujeeb’s carrom ball, which pitches on off stump, grips,d turns and takes out the off bail.
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4th over: India 7-0 (Rahul 6, Sharma 1) Aftab isn’t quick, around 82mph, but he’s busy and bustling and gets some lift. He keeps KL Rahul quiet and gets a maiden.
3rd over: India 7-0 (Rahul 6, Sharma 1) An even thriftier over and another moral victory for Mujeeb as Rahul plays a curious shot, a mistimed top-spin forehand that goes close to the man at short midwicket.
2nd over: India 6-0 (Rahul 5, Sharma 1) It’s seam at the other end in the shape of Aftab Alam. He’s wearing a headband, half red and half green, like a boy in the back yard saying “I’m McEnroe. And Viv Richards.” Three off the over again, with Rahul pushing into the covers for a couple.
1st over: India 3-0 (Rahul 2, Sharma 1) The new ball is taken by Mujeeb, the teenaged off-spinner who was Afghanistan’s best bowler against England. He makes a tidy start, conceding three singles and drawing a leading edge from Rohit Sharma. The pitch looks slow.
Teams
Just the one change for India, and that’s enforced, as Mohammad Shami comes in for the injured Bhuvneshwar Kumar. So there’s no Pant, unfortunately for the crowd, and India have a long tail. The Afghan bowlers’ job is to get down to it.
Gulbadin makes two changes, bringing back Hazratullah at the top of the order and Aftab at the bottom. Dawlat, the man who dropped Eoin Morgan on 28, pays the price, as if he hadn’t already. But it’ll be good to see Hazratullah, who is 21 (thanks for the correction, Romeo) and already on his second career. His first was as a security man, aged 15, working nights. He had internet access and used the time to study his favourite players.
India 1 Sharma, 2 Rahul, 3 Kohli (capt), 4 Shankar, 5 Dhoni (wkt), 6 Pandya, 7 Jadhav, 8 Kuldeep, 9 Shami, 10 Chahal, 11 Bumrah.
Afghanistan 1 Hazratullah, 2 Gulbadin (capt), 3 Rahmat, 4 Hashmatullah, 5 Afghan, 6 Nabi, 7 Najibullah, 8 Rashid, 9 Ikram (wkt), 10 Aftab, 11 Mujeeb.
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Toss: India bat first
Kohli wins the toss and chooses to bat. Gulbadin, still smiling, says he would have done the same.
Preamble
Morning everyone and welcome to what may well be the perfect mismatch. It’s the strongest team in the World Cup so far against the weakest. But the last time India met Afghanistan, in Dubai last September, the result was… a tie. On behalf of the neutrals, I’m putting in a request for another one of those.
A cup isn’t a proper cup without a few upsets. England have done their best as hosts to make the party go with a swing, by stumbling to defeat against Pakistan and Sri Lanka. But those two games are the only ones in which a team from the top four has lost to one of the other six. Today, for the sake of the tournament, West Indies need to beat New Zealand, who have a 100pc record when they get onto the field. The same is true of India, but the chances of Afghanistan springing a shock do look a bit remote.
For Virat Kohli, who missed the tie in Dubai, the question is whether to rest any of his big guns and give a World Cup debut to Rishabh Pant. Rest is hardly needed as India have only played three games so far, but England showed yesterday that it’s unwise to keep letting the same batsmen do all the work, because then, when you’re in a tight corner, the spare parts are liable to be rusty and brittle. Pant is a thrilling stroke-player who surely should have been in India’s squad in the first place. He has it in him to be this team’s Geoff Hurst.
For Afghanistan, it’s all about getting over their most recent experience, watching in disbelief as Eoin Morgan scored a century in sixes. “You’re only as good as your last match,” people are apt to say – and it’s nonsense. A firework display is often followed by a fizzle, and vice-versa. Morgan went from hero to zero yesterday; Rashid Khan, his main victim on Tuesday, left nursing a bruised ego and figures of 9-0-110-0, is easily good enough to make the same journey in the opposite direction.
The match is at Southampton, which tends to be a sporting surface with plenty of runs in it. Play starts at 10.30am BST, in about 35 minutes.