Asia Cup 2018: India vs Afghanistan - A match to remember

A dead rubber that ended in a tie was a treat to watch by every cricket fan. Given how Afghanistan has played throughout this Asia Cup 2018, they deserved this tie, if not a victory.

India started off as the obvious favourites and made almost half-a-dozen changes to its team to give the bench strength a fair chance in the tournament. Surprising everyone, MS Dhoni came into captain the side and completed 200 ODIs as an Indian captain. Deepak Chahar made his debut and the likes of Siddarth Kaul, Khaleel Ahmed, KL Rahul and Manish Pandey were included in the team.

Afghanistan decided to bat first, given their strategy of putting 250-plus scores on the board and then defending it with their magical bowling line-up. They started off well with the opening partnership putting up 65 runs for the first wicket but were soon reduced to 82 for 4 only with Mohammad Shahzad doing the bulk of scoring for the team.

He was, however, running out of partners but played his natural attacking game and brought up his 5th ODI century and his 1st against India. After his departure, Mohammad Nabi showed his class and played along to take the team's total past 250, which is always been their target score to defend. The Indian bowling, however, looked rusty and lacked experience in the absence of Bhuvi-Bumrah.

The Indian batsmen had a task in their hand as it was not going to be easy to chase down 250 odd runs against some quality bowling of Afghanistan. KL Rahul and Ambati Rayudu started off the innings for India in grand style. They played some free-flowing strokes and stitched a 110-run opening stand.

Rayudu played with much more dominance and brought his half-century before falling prey to Nabi. KL Rahul also scored his half-century before getting out to Rashid Khan. He took review against the umpire's decision of LBW that didn't go his way and proved to be very costly for India in the latter part of the chase.

Dhoni and Karthik were victims of some poor umpiring decisions

Soon, India started losing crucial wickets at regular intervals. Also, some poor umpiring decisions proved to be vital. Dhoni was adjudged LBW and the replay showed the ball missing the leg stump by a very far margin. Since India had lost the review, they had no choice but to go by the umpire's decision.

However, the partnership between Kedar Jadhav and Dinesh Karthik settled things for India for a while. They were going at a decent rate and were threatening to take the game away from Afghanistan but the run out of Jadhav brought them back into the game. It was followed by the dismissal of Dinesh Karthik in the next over who was the victim of another poor LBW decision by the umpire Gregory Brathwaite.

India was now restricted to 205 for 6 and their only hope was Jadeja and the rest of the tail. Jadeja played cautiously and built some valuable partnerships first with Deepak Chahar and then with Kuldeep Yadav. Some tight bowling from Afghanistan took this game to the last over, where at one time it was looking that India would chase it down quite comfortably within 45 overs.

Rashid Khan came in to defend 7 runs off the final over. Jadeja took the responsibility and slogged the second ball of the over to the mid-wicket boundary for four runs. The next ball he took a single that brought Khaleel to the strike. Khaleel did his job and gave the strike back to Jadeja hence levelling the scores.

The equation now read - 1 run from 2 balls. Rashid bowled a short ball and Jadeja mistimed his pull and was caught by Najibullah towards the midwicket area. There was joy among the Afghans as they tied a match against the No.2 ranked ODI side in the world. For India, it was a disbelief as they came from a position of winning the game to almost losing it and then finally settling for a tie.

Afghanistan showed their full potential and calibre to everyone in this tournament and rightly deserve to be competing against some top sides in the world now instead of teams like Ireland, Scotland and Zimbabwe. It would be harsh on them now if they are seen as underdogs and minnows. They are a competitive side with a fighting attitude and would be interesting to see them compete in the World Cup 2019.