Afghanistan’s fairytale run at the T20 World Cup has come to a crushing end, after being rolled for a record low total by South Africa in a humbling semi-final defeat.
Having made a stunning run to the last four with wins over Australia and Bangladesh, the latter in dramatic circumstances, the tournament’s Cinderella story barely fired a shot as they were bowled out for just 56 – the worst ever in a T20 World Cup knockout match, and Afghanistan’s worst ever T20I score.
Remarkably, it is 45 runs lower than the previous worst on the former score, the West Indies’ 101 all out against Sri Lanka at the 2009 World T20 semi-final.
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Long derided for their tendency of choking in big matches, having lost all their previous seven semi-finals across the T20 and ODI World Cups and the Champions Trophy, a clinical performance from the Proteas’ lethal bowling attack sparked the brutal collapse, while their top order was clinical in chasing down the small target with nine wickets and 67 balls to spare.
The emphatic win is, remarkably, the Proteas’ first ever semi-final win in an ICC tournament, having lost (or in the case of the 1999 ODI World Cup, tied) all seven of their previous matches.
They will wait to face one of India or England, who lock horns in Guyana on Friday morning (AEST) in the decider in Barbados.
It was also a refreshing change of pace for Proteas supporters, having endured a series of nail-biting wins in their unbeaten run through the tournament to date, including a one-run win over Nepal, a four-run win over Bangladesh and a four-wicket win over the Netherlands in the group stage and seven-run and three-wicket triumphs over England and the West Indies respectively in the Super 8s.
Beginning when Rahmanullah Gurbaz, so key against Australia with a half-century, edged Marco Jansen to slip for a duck in the opening over, South Africa were on course.
Kagiso Rabada celebrates after bowling Ibrahim Zadran. (Photo by Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
And with a pacy, bouncy pitch at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Trinidad and Tobago perfectly suiting the Proteas’ pace brigade, Jansen, together with Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje, ran riot.
Jansen added a second scalp when he clean bowled veteran Gulbadin Naib for 9 in his second over, while Rabada found vicious seam movement to castle Ibrahim Zadran and Mohammad Nabi in his first, to leave Afghanistan reeling at 5/23 after five overs.
Remarkably, extras would be the top-scorer of the innings with 13, four of them from a brutal Nortje riser that steepled over the stumps and over wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock’s head for four byes.
Summing up Afghanistan’s woes was the downfall of Nangeyalia Kharote, done in not by vicious bounce or prodigious seam movement, but gloving Jansen down the leg side to a gleeful de Kock.
Rabada (2/14) and Jansen (3/16) blew out the top order, while Nortje (2/7) was too much for the rest of the recognised batters, with captain Rashid Khan’s late resistance with a pair of boundaries ending with his off stump out of the ground.
Spinner Tabraiz Shamsi arrived to finish off the tail within 11 balls, trapping Karim Janat, Noor Ahmad and Naveen-ul-Haq all LBW to complete the humiliation.
With the pitch still playing tricks, opener Quinton de Kock was cleaned up by a sizzling inswinger from Fazalhaq Farooqi, but the Proteas battened down the hatches to get through the toughest overs.
Any chance of a miracle Afghanistan win was all but snuffed out when an edge behind from South African captain Aiden Markram wasn’t reviewed, with captain Rashid Khan hearing an edge from mid-off but unable to convince his team and unwilling to send it upstairs.
Having struggled to 13 runs off the first four overs, the end came quickly as Markram and Reeza Hendricks finished off Afghanistan’s tournament in a flurry of boundaries, a six and four from Hendricks off Azmatullah Omarzai completing the demolition.
Nevertheless, Afghanistan’s fairytale run through to the semi-finals, their maiden ICC knockouts berth, is scarcely diminished by the horror show, with the emerging nation’s rise from the lower rungs of the cricketing world as recently as 15 years ago one of the sport’s greatest ever stories.
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