England's Sam Curran delivered a memorable bowling performance in the Super 12 encounter of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup against Afghanistan in Perth on Saturday as England bowled out Mohammed Nabi's men for a meager total of 112.England chased it down later with five wickets and 11 deliveries to spare.The England bowlers kept the Afghanistan batters under pressure right from the beginning of the match and restricted the Afghans to less than six runs per over in the powerplay.But there was still some hope for Mohammad Nabi's men as they had wickets in hand.
However that didn''t matter in the end, as Curran bowled a superb spell to bundle them out for 112.England got off to a steady start with Alex Hales and Jos Buttler putting on an opening stand of 35 runs.
But they suffered a brief scare in the middle as they went on to lose four wickets in the space of just 46 runs.
Afghanistan could also sense that they were back in the game.But Liam Livingstone stepped up and scored an unbeaten 29 from 21 deliveries to guide England home.This win also gave England a significant boost in their NRR, which stands at +0.620 right now.
Afghanistan fought well with the ball but this loss has left them with a NRR of -0.620 and they will need to work really hard to improve it.Speaking after the match, Afghanistan captain Mohammad Nabi said: &It's not the best start to the tournament for us but we tried our best.
We didn''t get a good enough total on the board in the first innings and everyone knows England are one of the best T20 teams in the world.The pitch was more suitable to them as well but there weren''t enough runs.
I still think our boys played really well.They took some very good catches out there.
We were thinking that something like 150 would be a good score to fight with.We do want to bat first and we know we have very good spinners with a lot of experience in Australia.We will learn from this game and from our mistakes.
Hopefully we can improve on that in the next game,& he said.The post England clinches 5-wicket win over Afghanistan in first World Cup match first appeared on Ariana News.