Afghanistan turn to careful cricket for unprecedented success

Mohammad Nabi balanced on his tip-toes millimetres inside the long-on boundary, ball in hand. Yes, he had taken a clean - and more importantly, legal - catch. Angelo Mathews had to go, with nine balls remaining in the Sri Lankan innings, and damage still to do.

Just a few overs earlier, Nabi had seen the ball burst under his hands and through his legs after Maheesh Theekshana picked up a yorker-gone-wrong from Azmatullah Omarzai and spanked it through the covers. The shot was hit so hard that Nabi's only slightly delayed reactions cost Afghanistan four runs and Sri Lanka's lower order were getting away. But they only got as far as 241 and it was Afghanistan's ground fielding that was responsible for some of that.

Robbed of their wicketkeeper to a dislocated finger in the second over, Afghanistan were energetic and committed. Pathum Nissanka could not get Mujeeb Ur Rahman past a strategically placed short third, substitute fielder Najibullah Zadran patrolled the cover area well and, later on, Ibrahim Zadran's one-handed pick-up and throw to score a direct-hit caught Dushmantha Chameera short of his ground.

Afghanistan have chased more runs than this, both against Sri Lanka - 269 in Hambantota in June - and at this tournament - 283 against Pakistan in their previous match - but even on a good surface, giving themselves less to do was top of mind. And it had to be. Because Gurbaz as a keeper does not always translate well into Gurbaz as an opener - the half-centuries he scored at this tournament came when he was unburdened from glove duties and today he was dismissed for a duck. His trusted opening partner Ibrahim Zadran bedded in until the 17th over, but then it was up to what has been a shaky middle-order to see things through, without the foundation of a strong opening stand.

That's important because both times that Afghanistan had won at this World Cup before this, their batting was built on a century-opening stand, and not because they don't, on paper, have the personnel to do the job. Rahmat Shah and Mohammad Nabi are their two leading ODI run-scorers of all time, though Nabi has not been (or been needed to be) at his best with the bat, and three others, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Azmatullah Omarzai and Ikram Alikhil, have scored half-centuries in the tournament so far. Their batting has settled from sometimes erratic to methodical in three of five games they played before this one. While they had blowouts against Bangladesh and New Zealand, they topped 270 against India (although the surface could easily have provided many more) and 280 against England and Pakistan. In those matches, there's been a sense of steadiness in their approach which was felt even as they went boundary-less between the 10th and 20th over in the chase. That's when Zadran fell, but what could have been a mini-collapse, became a mini-vigil.

Afghanistan's plan is quite simply to build in 10-over periods, and it's not a strategy so mysterious that it needs to be hidden from anyone. They have a white-board in the dressing room, with the targets marked out. For this match it was straightforward: 50 runs after 10 overs (which they got), 100 after 20 (they were 13 short) and so on in multiples, with a target to win by the 48th over. The idea may seem so rudimentary that it doesn't need writing down but for Afghanistan it's a reminder that they need to use the whole innings and not rush things.

Shahidi, for one, would have needed to see it when he played a reckless pull in the 21st over that went over Mendis' head. He settled back down to focus on rotating strike with Rahmat and their 58-run partnership ensured Afghanistan were relatively on track as the 30-over mark approached. For coach Jonathan Trott, it was proof that the method is working, especially when the team is chasing.

"When you're batting first, it's a case of communication and seeing where you can get but when you are chasing the target never changes. So there's a focus on breaking it down into smaller targets because if you break it down it seems a lot more manageable," he said at the post-match press conference. "There's also a feel-good factor if you know you are on the right track."

Rahmat eventually played two high-risk shots back-to-back, was dropped off the first and caught off the second, against a good cross-seam delivery from Rajitha, and Shahidi also took his chances when he swept Dhananjaya de Silva over Mathews' head but, for most of the chase, Afghanistan played careful cricket, perhaps not sexy at a time when big hits gets the biggest cheers but nonetheless thrilling for Trott, who is seeing a new approach take hold.

"We've been working really hard on our batting and doing the basics right and also working on the way we think about our cricket and how to accept responsibility. You are starting to see the confidence the players have in their own ability," he said. "Afghanistan has always had talent but now we've given it a bit of structure and a game-plan. For this team, growing up having played T20 cricket, the development has been the other way around. We're concentrating on making sure you're in and it's amazing how quickly you can score by playing good cricket shots. What we have is very talented T20 players being able to score at sixes and sevens and not 15 or 16. It's really exciting to see."

At a World Cup where we have seen 400 crossed twice and the fastest century at tournaments beaten twice already, to call slower scoring "exciting" may first strike as a bit ridiculous but for Trott's team, it's brought results and the rise of a new star: Omarzai. He scored his second half-century of the tournament and has been described as as good as they come by Trott. "As a natural striker of the cricket ball, I haven't seen much better," he said.

Omarzai hit the winning runs inside 46 overs, 16 balls quicker than the whiteboard predicted, which you'd say, even without any complicated mathematics, signals a comprehensive victory. Another comprehensive victory.

Before this match, Afghanistan had already secured their most successful fifty-over World Cup campaign, albeit the bar was low. They had only won one match in their previous two appearances, and lost all nine games in 2019, and that victory was over Scotland in 2015. Here, they doubled their victory count against Full Members even before facing Sri Lanka. Now, they've tripled it and sit in fifth place on the points table. They have Netherlands, Australia and South Africa to play and are still in contention for the semi-finals.

We don't know if Nabi, Afghanistan's most experienced player, who has played 153 ODIs dating back to 2009, would ever have thought he'd find himself in a position like this, but one thing is clear: he is loving every moment. He was at the head of the victory lap Afghanistan went on immediately afterwards to thank the 12,177 fans who came to the MCA Stadium, most of them shouting for Afghanistan. For them, the Afghanistan captain had a special message: "This is not the end," Shahidi said. "We are happy with the wins but we still have more to do."

They do, and Trott has already told them what it is: "Nobody has got a hundred yet. That's the next challenge. That's the next barrier," he said. "And there are three, and possibly four, more games for Afghanistan to achieve it."