Rashid: One of our greatest performances in T20s
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Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan reckoned their massive T20I win against New Zealand as the 'greatest performance' of the side in the shortest format of cricket.
Rashid and Fazalhaq Farooqui took 4 wickets each as Afghan's skittle New Zealand out for 75 in a chase of 159 after the hundred-run partnership between Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran.
"It's one of the greatest performances from us, especially in T20s against a big team New Zealand. It was a great team effort, not just the bowling...," Rashid said.
"The way Ibrahim and Gurbaz started again, the wicket was not easy. They did not throw away their wickets in overs 7-10. But the way they played, they didn't throw away their wickets early on when they had a few dot balls from overs seven to nine. I think that was the time when they thought about taking it deep. Overall it was a great effort, great win for Afghanistan and it's a great feeling to be leading this side and winning against New Zealand," he added.
New Zealand captain Kane Williamson had termed Afghanistan's bowling unit as one of the better ones going around in the competition.
"It's the opportunities we had and we didn't take and on a surface like that, it goes a long way to changing the score and the outcome. We had a couple of overs to perhaps keep it something defendable but we needed to get a lot right in the second innings with what was on offer and they executed really well," Williamson said.
"We certainly had opportunities in that first half and we didn't take it. They simply outplayed us in all facets of the game. To get a total like that on a fiddly surface, they kept wickets in hand and played it beautifully. From our perspective, it wasn't good enough in terms of starting a tournament," he added.