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England will look to avoid a potential banana peel against a resurgent Afghanistan when the two teams face off in their World T20 match on Wednesday. You can follow the live scores and a blog of this match on The Roar from 3pm local time, 8:30pm AEDT.
It has been an interesting start for England, having lost and won in two high-scoring encounters.
While they will know they need to win their remaining two matches to seal off a semi-final berth, their batting gives the impression of being well-settled in this format.
In their first match against West Indies they looked to have enough runs on the board when they got to 182 from their 20 overs and it needed a Chris Gayle-special to usurp their effort. In the end, a Gayle century ensured the game was lost comfortably but that encounter could well have given them the blueprint on how to bat in these conditions.
And that was exactly how they did it against South Africa in their next match.
Playing on a flat surface in Mumbai, South Africa piled up a mammoth 229 from their 20 overs and looked heavy favourites to clinch a win. Instead, Jason Roy provided England a swashbuckling start which set their foundation but it was Joe Root’s impressive ability to find boundaries on a regular basis and over a sustained period of time that brought the side a win in the end.
On the flip-side, England’s bowling will hope for some respite after having gone for 412 runs in 38.1 overs with Moeen Ali being the only bowler to have conceded less than 10 an over in both the games. The rest have all been pounded and that could mean England might look to make a change or two to their bowling.
Afghanistan qualified for the event after they won three matches in the first round, overcoming Scotland, Hong Kong and Zimbabwe at that stage. And while they have come close to running their opponents down in the first two matches close, they have fallen in a hurry.
In their opener against Sri Lanka, they looked to have gotten themselves to a middling score of 153 but had it not been for a bad day in the field, they could have well caused an upset.
This was followed by their bowling wheels falling apart against South Africa but Afghanistan did retaliate strongly with a score of 172 to go down by 37 runs.
Given England’s bowling so far, Afghanistan will be looking to go after them in a hurry but it’s their bowling which might have to do a little more than usual against a team that’s brimming with batting confidence.
England do have a habit of slipping against Associates in World Cup cricket but it seems to be a different white-ball cricket team they have under Trevor Bayliss and they will start favourites to win this one.
You can follow the live scores and a blog of this match on The Roar from 3pm local time, 8:30pm AEDT.
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