After a brutal dig from Australia cricketer Adam Zampa, who labelled Gulbadin Naib’s controversial act in the T20 World Cup Super Eight match between Afghanistan and Bangladesh on Tuesday as “the old rainstring,” Aussie skipper Mitchell Marsh had his say on the incident after the 2021 champions were knocked out of the tournament.
The equation for Australia, who lost against Afghanistan and India, was to expect Bangladesh to beat Rashid Khan’s men, albeit by a small margin, to make the semis. And it almost looked possible with Litton Das single-handedly leading the charge with his valiant half-century knock in a rain-affected see-saw game in Kingstown. However, Afghanistan eventually held their nerves in the nail-biter to win by eight runs on DLS to knock out Australia and make the semifinals for the first time in ICC tournaments.
During the game, just when Kingstown witnessed a slight drizzle for the first time, Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott was caught signalling the players to slow down the play, given that the team was ahead of the DLS par score by three runs in the 12th over of the second innings. Right then, Gulbadin, standing in the slip, dramatically fell to the ground, clutching his hamstring, which caused a delay for a few minutes before the covers were on.
While Gulbadin sparked hilarious memes moments after the incident, it led to immense criticism when he took the field after play resumed, picked up a wicket and joined Afghanistan’s wild celebrations. Despite being lashed out at, even by veteran cricketers, Marsh saw the funny side to Gulbadin’s act.
“I was almost in tears laughing and at the end of the day it had no bearing on the game,” said Marsh. “So we can laugh about it now – but gee it was funny. It was outstanding.”
The Aussie all-rounder, however, admitted that it was difficult to watch the team suffer back-to-back losses in the Super Eight that led to Australia’s exit from the race to the semifinal.
“We watched it as a group. It was obviously a pretty amazing game wasn’t it? A lot of twists and turns,” he said.
“Obviously you want to keep playing this tournament and that was our only way of doing it. But there’s also the element that it was completely out of our control and we only had ourselves to blame for that.
“We were all flat (when the final wicket fell). We were desperate to continue on in the tournament. But fair play to Afghanistan – they beat us and they beat Bangladesh and they deserve to be in the semi-finals.”
