Afghanistan captain Gulbadin Naib felt too much emotion cost his side against India
Sunday 23 June 2019 08:45, UK
Afghanistan captain Gulbadin Naib believes the emotion of the occasion cost his side the opportunity to pull of a shock World Cup victory against India in Southampton.
Mohammed Shami's hat-trick saw Afghanistan bowled out for 213 in 49.5 overs as they fell to an agonising 11-run defeat.
An impressive bowling effort from Afghanistan - who are yet to win in the tournament - which included Gulbadin picking up 2-51 and Mohammad Nabi taking 2-33, restricted India to a below-par looking 224-8 - captain Virat Kohli top-scoring with 67.
Despite believing his side were capable of chasing down the low total, Gulbadin lamented the missed opportunity of snatching a win over the team he usually supports.
"At one point I thought we might be able to win easily, but in the end we were all emotional inside," he said. "We're upset because we had a chance for a victory which would be a big achievement for any team.
"We missed the opportunity to beat India. They are my favourite team and I support them when I am watching.
"Virat Kohli is my favourite player and it was great to play against him. But we came back strongly from our last game, which was important."
India batsman Kedar Yadhav admitted his team fell 20 to 30 runs short of their desired total on a challenging pitch and credited the bowlers for getting them out of a precarious position.
"The wicket was slow and they were playing with four spinners. The ball was turning... it was difficult to play shots," he said.
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"When the wicket is such, you need to analyse what sort of score we are looking at. Our actual plan was to look for around 250, we were targeting 250 to 260 but fell short by 20 to 30 runs.
"Going into the fielding, we knew that we have to make up those 15, 20 runs in fielding. Obviously, credit to the bowlers that they defended this small total.
"We had belief in our death specialist bowlers. Jasprit Bumrah is the number one bowler.
"We knew we had to get just one wicket to break that partnership, and the next batsman would be finding it difficult to score those runs in that scenario."
