Afghanistan bowling allrounder Azmatullah Omarzai says he was really happy after scoring his maiden World Cup fifty during the team’s clash against India on October 11 at Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi.
Azmatullah on His First World Cup Fifty
Azmatullah Omarzai achieved this feat during the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup 2023 league game against India. Speaking on the match, Afghanistan won the toss and opted to bat first where Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran opened the batting attack.
The duo made a steady start but failed to withstand the Indian pace attack. Bumrah dismissed Ibrahim Zadran for 22 runs and drew the first blood for Afghanistan. Following his dismissal Rahmat Shah joined hands with Gurbaz and made a 31 runs partnership before Hardik Pandya dismissed Gurbaz for 21 runs.
While the team were in need of a partnership, Hashmatullah Shahidi and Azmatullah Omarzai made a 121-run stand against the quality Indian bowling attack and moved the team’s score to 184 before Hardik Pandya dismissed Omarzai for 62 runs.
Following his dismissal Hashmatullah Shahidi with his steady 80 runs led Afghan to score 225 runs. Following some handy runs from the lower order, Afghanistan scored 272 runs for 8-wicket loss at the end of 50 overs.
Speaking on his performance, Azmatullah Omarzai said “I am really happy having scored my first World Cup fifty. I’ll try to carry this form into the next games. We lost early wickets, so we were trying to build a partnership. We were rotating the strike and tried to put the loose balls away. We tried to score around 300, but we lost wickets in the middle overs. We have good spinners in our team, so will try to defend this total”.
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India’s spearhead Jasprit Bumrah bagged 4 wickets in 10 overs he bowled while Hardik Pandya bagged a couple of wickets. Shardul Thakur and Kuldeep Yadav bagged one wicket each while Mohammed Siraj and Ravindra Jadeja went wicketless.
