Windies ended their five-year-long wait of winning an ODI series on Saturday (9th November) after beating Afghanistan by 47 runs. After this second game of this three-match ODI series, Windies are leading it by 2-0.
After winning the toss in this Lucknow ODI, Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan decided to field first. Windies openers Shai Hope and Evin Lewis provided a very good start. The openers put the 98 runs partnership for the first wicket.
But after Rashid Khan broke that partnership by dismissing Shai Hope (43 runs), Windies lost their next wickets at regular intervals. Another opener Lewis scored 54 runs.
After scoring 34 runs, Shimron Hetmyer lost his wicket. At the late moment of that innings, Nicholas Pooran and Romario Shepherd put a firing 50 runs partnership for the seventh wicket. However, Pooran scored 39 runs (19 balls) in that partnership while Shepherd scored just six runs (9 balls) before losing his wicket.
Pooran’s late firing batting helped Windies to put fighting first innings total – 247/9 (50 overs). While the other middle-order batsmen were failing to reach the double-digit scores, Pooran scored 67 runs off 50 balls (7 fours and 3 sixes).
Among the Afghanistan bowlers, only the right-arm pacer Naveen-ul-Haq (3/60) scalped more than one wicket.
Windies bowled out Afghanistan for 200 runs
In reply, once again, the Afghan batsmen struggled to score big runs. Four batsmen reached the 20-run marks, including one half-century, but Afghanistan failed to win that match at the end. These four batsmen are Najibullah Zadran (56), Rahmat Shah (33), Mohammad Nabi (32) and Hazratullah Zazai (23).
There were also had two 50+ partnerships during that chasing. While Rahmat Shah and Hazratullah Zazai put the second wicket partnership of 53 runs, Najibullah Zadran and Mohammad Nabi set the 68 runs partnership for the sixth wicket. However, most of the other partnerships struggled to add runs on the board. Afghanistan were finally all-out on just 200 runs (45.4 overs).
Sheldon Cottrell (3/29), Roston Chase (3/30) and Hayden Walsh (3/36) all picked up three wickets each to secure a series-winning victory for Windies.
Since August 2014, it was the first ODI series victory for Windies. The Caribbean team finally won an ODI series after failing to win it in 21 consecutive series. Earlier, on last Wednesday (6th November), Windies won the first match of this ODI series by seven wickets.
On the other hand, the latest lose was Afghanistan’s 11th consecutive ODI defeat.