Najibullah Zadran tore into the opposition attack with six sixes to lead Afghanistan into the Asia Cup Super Four stage with a seven-wicket win over Bangladesh on Tuesday.
\nChasing 128 for victory, Afghanistan were in trouble at 62-3 when Najibullah (43 not out) joined Ibrahim Zadran (42 not out) for an unbeaten stand of 69 as they won with nine balls to spare in Sharjah.
\nSpinners Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Rashid Khan took three wickets each to set up the victory as Afghanistan restricted their opponents to 127-7 after Bangladesh elected to bat first.
\nAfghanistan, led by Mohammad Nabi, registered their second straight victory to become the first of the six teams to reach the next phase of the competition, which acts as a tune-up to the T20 World Cup in October-November.
\nAfghanistan lost Rahmanullah Gurbaz for 11 when skipper Shakib Al Hasan, playing his 100th T20 international, had the opener stumped with his left-arm spin.
\nMosaddek Hossain dismissed Hazratullah Zazai for 23 as Afghanistan seemed to lose control of their chase with runs hard to come by.
\nNabi departed in the 13th over and the Bangladesh supporters, who clearly outnumbered the Afghans, raised the roof.
\nBut the left-handed Najibullah timed the chase to perfection as he finished with a flurry of sixes and one four in his 17-ball blitz.
\nThe innings put Ibrahim’s knock in the shade as he hit four fours in his 41-ball stay.
\nEarlier, Mujeeb shared the new ball with left-arm quick Fazalhaq Farooqi and struck in each of his first three overs, including the key wicket of Shakib for 11.
\nRashid joined forces with Mujeeb after the powerplay to send back wicketkeeper-batsman Mushfiqur Rahim, trapped lbw for one.
\nMushfiqur failed to pick a superb Rashid googly which the umpire gave not out, only for Afghanistan to successfully review the decision in their favour.
\nAfif Hossain and Mahmudullah Riyad attempted to rebuild but Rashid broke through with another googly that trapped the left-handed Afif lbw for 12.
\nRashid struck again and cut short Mahmudullah\u00b4s stay on 25 as the batsman top-edged a shot to deep mid-wicket.
\nMosaddek Hossain then took on the bowlers to smash four boundaries and a six in his late blitz of 48, but Afghanistan finished the innings by conceding just seven runs in a final over that included a runout.
\nTeams
\nAfghanistan:
\nHazratullah Zazai, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Ibrahim Zadran, Karim Janat, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi (capt), Rashid Khan, Azmatullah Omarzai, Naveen-ul-Haq, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fazalhaq Farooqi
\nBangladesh:
\nMohammad Naim, Anamul Haque, Shakib Al Hasan (capt), Afif Hossain, Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), Mosaddek Hossain, Mahmudullah, Mahedi Hasan, Mohammad Saifuddin, Taskin Ahmed, Mustafizur Rahman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Najibullah Zadran tore into the opposition attack with six sixes to lead Afghanistan into the Asia Cup Super Four stage with a seven-wicket win over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}