Afghanistan Cricket Board complains to Asian Cricket Council over miscalculation issues leading to their exit from Asia Cup 2023

Pakistan has performed amazingly in the Asia Cup 2023 so far. The team have also started the Super 4 stage of the tournament with a brilliant win. Talking about the 16th season of the tournament, 2 out of 6 teams have been eliminated. This includes Afghanistan and Nepal. In a group round match, Afghanistan lost by 2 runs against Sri Lanka as they made a huge blunder in the final stage of the match. Afghanistan batters were not able to assess the run rate properly in the last overs. 

After the defeat, coach Jonathan Trott said that the officials related to the match had not told them all the equations of Super-4 qualification. Now the Afghanistan Cricket Board has reached out to the Asian Cricket Council i.e. ACC regarding this. The Afghan Board said in the complaint that the officials who were negligent regarding the run rate should be punished. If our employees are also found at fault, they will also be punished.

“We were never communicated those calculations. All we were communicated was we needed to win in 37.1 overs. We were not told what the overs in which we could get 295 or 297, That we could win in 38.1 overs was never communicated to us,” Trott was quoted as saying by Zee news

A huge blunder by the Afghanistan team

Afghanistan Cricket Board spokesperson Mohammad Naseem Saadat said that laxity was taken regarding the run rate issue. The team had to suffer the consequences of this. Talking about the Afghanistan and Sri Lanka match, while chasing the target of 292 runs against Sri Lanka, the Afghanistan team returned to the pavilion after scoring 289 runs in 37.4 overs. 

After the 37th over, Afghanistan’s score was 289 runs for 8 wickets. Before the match, the Afghanistan team was told that they would have to win the match in 37.1 overs. In such a situation, they had to score 3 runs on one ball, but it could not happen.

Rashid Khan was standing at the other end. After this, it came to the fore regarding the net run rate that Afghanistan’s team can still overtake Sri Lanka. Had Afghanistan scored 293 runs in 37.2 overs, 294 in 37.3 overs, 295 in 37.5 overs, 296 in 38 overs and 297 in 38.1 overs, they could have overtaken Sri Lanka in terms of run rate. Fazalhaq Farooqi, who came to bat at number 11, was not aware of this.

In the 38th over, Farooqui felt that they had lost the match. In such a situation, he did not even score a run on the full toss ball and he was out on the fourth ball. At that time Rashid was playing after scoring 27 runs on 16 balls, if he had got a chance, he could have hit a four or a six.