Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan threw his weight behind Gulbadin Naib, who has been on the firing line for allegedly faking a hamstring injury during a T20 World Cup Super Eight match against Bangladesh at the Arnos Vale Ground in Kingstown on Tuesday. Rashid said Gulbadin “had some cramps” that forced him to go down during the 12th over of Bangladesh’s chase.
The Afghanistan all-rounder’s act drew severe criticism from various quarters as many, including commentators Simon Doull, Pommie Mbangwa and current and former cricketers Ravichandran Ashwin and Michael Vaughan, believed Gulbadin fell to the ground to waste time as Afghanistan were ahead of Bangladesh in DLS par score.
“Well, he had some cramp, I don’t know what happened to him and I don’t know what’s going on in social media but that doesn’t matter,” Rashid said in the post-match press conference.
The rain intensified when Noor Ahmed was halfway through the 12th of the Bangladesh innings. The rain got heavier after the left-arm wrist spinner spun another wrong’un past Tanzim Sakib’s bat. Seeing this, Afghanistan head coach Jonathan Trott came close to the boundary lines and made multiple hand gestures to attract the attention of the Afghan fielders. He even shouted: “Slow down!” asking the Afghanistan players to control the pace of the game as they were ahead of the DLS par score by two runs. If the match stopped at that point and did not resume, Afghanistan would have won and qualified for the semi-finals.
As Noor was about to bowl the fifth ball of the over, Gulbadin, standing at first slip, suddenly grabbed his hamstring out of nowhere and fell to the ground. This stoppage was enough for the umpires to call for covers.
Gulbadin was seen walking off the field with the help of a couple of his teammates. The rain, however, repented after five minutes and the players were back on the field. One over was deducted from Bangladesh’s innings and they got a revised target of 114 instead of the original 116.
“It’s just the on-field injury that comes and then we haven’t lost any overs, the rain came and we just went off, it’s not something that brought a massive difference in the game. We came back on field after five minutes and there was no massive difference. For me, it’s just like a small injury comes in, then you have to take some time,” Rashid said.
Gulbadin returned on the field after just one over and even bowled a couple of times without any visible discomfort. He also picked up Tanzim’s wicket with a short-pitched delivery.
In the end, Afghanistan won the match by eight runs via DLS method as Naveen Ul Haq picked up back-to-back wickets in the 18th over to finish off the match. This win took Afghanistan to their first-ever semi-final in all World Cups and also knocked Australia out of the tournament.
