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New Zealand vs Afghanistan, 40th Match, Group 2, Abu Dhabi, Nov 7 2021, ICC Men’s T20 World Cup

Match Result: New Zealand won by 8 wickets (with 11 balls remaining)

Player of the Match: Trent Boult

Match Report: With three teams fighing for one spot, the equation was simplest for New Zealand and they made light work of Afghanistan. In a must-win game for both teams, the Kiwi pacers put a lot of pressure on the Afghan batters by removing the top three inside the powerplay. Najibullah Zadran was impressive with the bat but none of the other batters made any significant contributions and Afghanistan ended up with a below-par score.

Trent Boult | Player of the Match: “Nice to tick off the performance here this afternoon. Now we move forward for the business end of the tournament. Boys are feeling good. There is a big difference between the day games and the night games.

We have been playing good cricket. Hopefully we can keep it going. It’s just about adapting (to the toss), executing well and chasing it down properly was what we talked about, glad that we got the job done.”

Mohammad Nabi | Afghanistan captain: “It was our plan to bat first and put a decent total on the board. We didn’t start well, early wickets slowed us down, we built partnerships but didn’t we finish well. We were 30 runs short on this pitch. We were eyeing 145-160, that would have been a decent total.

Our bowling is strong, but we didn’t get a good total. The pitch wasn’t helpful too. We tried our best and bowled really well in this game. We have a lot of experience playing in the UAE, we played good cricket and we take a lot of positives from this tournament. Hopefully we work on our mistakes and do better in the upcoming matches.”

Kane Williamson | New Zealand captain: “It was a strong performance. We know how dangerous this Afghanistan side is, they have got match-winners in all departments. It was nice to set the tone with the ball first up, take some early wickets which is always good and restricting them to a below-par score on a 150-155 surface. In the second innings, we knew there were big threats to navigate and we tried to suck things up and get as close as we could.

We would have batted first today, it’s not been the case in a number of the surfaces here. It’s certainly been a challenge to adjust quickly playing at three different venues. That’s the beauty of the game. We know we have got another strong challenge coming up in a few days time but really pleasing outing today for the team. Great fielding effort as well, that was outstanding.

With the day games, it’s important to set the tone in the park and bring that energy and we saw that from everybody. They (England) are a very strong side, for us it’s important we keep learning and focus on the sort of cricket we want to play. It’s been an incredibly tough competition and we’ve seen a lot of tight games as well. We are looking forward to the occasion.”