Afghanistan recovered from a top-order collapse to defeat UAE by 5 wickets in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier Super Sixes clash in Harare and kept their hopes alive for a spot in the World Cup. Afghanistan still need to defeat Ireland in their final Super Sixes match on Friday and hope that UAE wins against Zimbabwe to secure their qualification in the 10-team tournament.
However, they did make heavy weather of their target of 178 as they were stranded at 54/5 at one stage of their chase. A brilliant unbeaten 6th wicket partnership of 124 runs between makeshift opener Gulbadin Naib (74 n.o off 97) and Najibullah Zadran (63 n.o off 64) took them to the crucial victory.
Earlier, Shaiman Anwar’s half-century (64 off 87) and a smashing cameo by Mohammad Naveed (45 off 20) took UAE to 177 before getting bowled out in the 43rd over. Rashid Khan starred with the ball picking up 5/41 and reached 96 career ODI wickets and now needs only 4 in the next seven ODI’s to beat Australia’s Mitchell Starc’s record to the fastest 100 ODI wickets. Dawlat Zadran (3/45) started the slide for UAE as he picked up both Rohan Mustafa and Ghulam Shabber to leave UAE tottering at 15/2 in the 9th over.
The score soon became 18/3 in the 10th after Mujeeb Zadran got the wicket of Mohammad Boota (3). Chirag Suri (22) and Shaiman Anwar put on 41 runs before Suri fell to Rashid, who soon picked up Muhammad Usman for 13 to leave UAE at 84/5 in the 29th over.
Rashid picked up 3 more wickets to finish with his 5-for to set up the match nicely for the batters.
ICC World Cup Qualifiers Super Sixes Points Table:
| SUPER SIXES | |||||
| TEAM | Matches | Win | Loss | Points | Net Run-Rate |
| West Indies | 4 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 0.529 |
| Zimbabwe | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 0.52 |
| Scotland | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 0.315 |
| Ireland | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0.474 |
| Afghanistan | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0.343 |
| United Arab Emirates | 4 | 0 | 4 | 0 | -2.381 |
