Afghanistan beat defending champions England. In the first upset of the ICC ODI World Cup 2023, Afghanistan beat defending champions England by 69 runs in a one-sided encounter.
England’s batting line-up failed miserably against Afghanistan, being bowled out for 215 in pursuit of a target of 285, with Harry Brooke leading the charge with 66.
This is Afghanistan’s second World Cup win in history, previously Afghanistan played 17 World Cup matches, losing 16 and winning only one.
Afghanistan had their first win in the 2025 World Cup.
Afghanistan’s second ODI World Cup win is a historic one against the defending champions 🙌#ENGvAFG | #CWC23 pic.twitter.com/xoA00Hy7b5
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) October 15, 2023
On Sunday, the match between England and Afghanistan was played at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi, where England captain Jos Buttler won the toss and invited Afghanistan to bat.
Batting first, the Afghanistan team was all out by scoring 284 runs in the last over, Garbaz scored 80 runs and Ikram scored 58 runs.
Afghanistan’s innings:
The start of Afghanistan’s innings against England was excellent, a partnership of 114 runs was established between opener Rehmanullah Garbaz and Ibrahim Zadran for the first wicket, but then Ibrahim was sent to the pavilion by English bowler Adil Rashid for 28 runs.
Apart from this, after scoring 3 runs, the new batsman Rahmat Shah also fell victim to Adil Rashid while Rahmanullah Garbaz was also run out after scoring 80 runs, and Azmatullah Umarzai was dismissed by Livingstone for 19 runs.
However, Ikram Ali supported the team by playing an innings of 58 runs, Rashid Khan scored 23 runs and Mujeebur Rahman scored 28 runs.
Thus, the entire Afghanistan team was bowled out for 284 runs in 49.5 overs. On behalf of England, Adil Rashid took 3 wickets and Mark Wood took 2 wickets.
England’s innings:
In pursuit of Afghanistan’s target of 285 runs, England’s batting suffered from difficulties from the beginning, due to the continuous fall of wickets, the English batsmen could not play frozen, except for Harry Brook, none of the batsmen could resist the Afghan bowlers.
England’s first wicket fell for 3, with Bearstowe out for 2, followed by Joe Root on 11 and David Mullan on 32.
Apart from this, captain Jos Buttler scored 9, Livingston and Sam Curran scored 10, 10, Chris Woakes scored 9 runs, while on the one hand, the wickets of the English team were falling, on the other side, Harry Brooke scored a half-century and gave the team hope of victory. He was also dismissed for 66 runs.
Adil Rashid scored 20 runs, Mark Wood scored 18 runs and Topley scored 15 runs. The Afghan bowlers controlled the entire English team in 40.3 overs, thus Afghanistan defeated the defending champion England by 69 runs in the World Cup.
Mujeebur Rahman and Rashid Khan took 3 and 3 wickets respectively while Mohammad Nabi dismissed 2 players. He was named player of the match for his brilliant bowling.
It should be noted that Afghanistan and England have played 3 and 3 matches in this World Cup so far and both teams have lost 2 and 2 matches and won one.
