T20 World Cup 2021 | Mohammad Rizwan breaks six-year-long batting record of Chris Gayle

T20 World Cup 2021 | New Zealand bury India’s hopes; seal professional win against Afghanistan

Kane Williamson-led team sealed their place in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup after defeating Afghanistan by 8 wickets in Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi. On a hot Sunday afternoon, New Zealand chased down a paltry 125 runs, courtesy of steady contributions from all of their batters in a sticky wicket. After a decent start from Martin Guptill (28 off 23) and Daryl Mitchell (17 off 12), it was the captain Kane Williamson, who took control of the scoring. He anchored his way through the innings and scored 40 off 42 balls while building an important partnership of 68 runs with Devon Conway, who contributed 36 off 32 deliveries. Both players saw through the danger overs of Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Rashid Khan and played the ball on merit. They punished short deliveries from the spinners, making sure that they were always on track with the run-rate. Things could have been drastically different though if Hamid Hassan would have appealed on an absolute corker that seemed to have just missed Devon Conway’s bat en route to keeper Mohammad Shahzad in the 11th over of the game. Conway was on three runs at that point of time. Neither the bowler nor the keeper seemed to have known about the edge and ‘ultra-edge’ later covered the incident. At the end, the Kiwis went comfortably over the line with 11 balls to spare. Earlier in the day, the foundation was laid by the New Zealand pace trio of Adam Milne, Trent Boult and Tim Southee, who reduced the Afghan top order to 19-3 inside the powerplay. They were very accurate with the short ball ploy slipping a full length here and there as a change up. Trent Boult was the wrecker in chief for the Kiwi side and removed key men - Hazratullah Zazai (2 off 4), Karim Janat, (2 off 2) and Najibullah Zadran (73 off 48) who was taking the game away from NZ. Barring Mitchell Santner, who went for 27 runs off his 2 overs, all NZ bowlers were on the mark with their lengths and kept their economy rate below 6.5 RPO. Tight lines and back of the length bowling meant that the Afghan bowlers, barring Najibullah Zadran, could not get away and kept falling like a pack of cards, desperately trying to play their shots. The bowling unit was aided incredibly by the fielding effort from the players who saved several chances in the boundary ropes. With the win, NZ secured eight points to become the second team to qualify from Group 2. They will most likely qualify in second place for the semi-finals and would have to face England, who are looking like the team to beat at the moment. Speaking after the game, Kane Williamson spoke highly about the effort his bowling unit put in to restrict the Afghan top order. He further stated that his team will be focused on their next assignment and acknowledged that England are a great side and it would be tough to beat them.

WBBL 2021 | Harmanpreet Kaur’s all-round show, Poonam Yadav’s match-winning spell in limelight

India Women’s T20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur seems to be on a roll and have found her form just at the right time it seems. In back to back games, she gave match-winning performances, one with the bat and one with the ball to get her team Melbourne Renegades Women to the top of the Women’s Big Bash League 2021 points table. The off-spinner picked three wickets, giving away just 22 runs in her four overs to restrict the Melbourne Stars Women unit to only 103 in 20 overs in the first derby game of the season at Adelaide Oval. Along with her Sophie Molineux also picked two wickets. While coming to chase the total, the Gades were up and running and chased down the total in only 14.1 overs with Jemimah Rodrigues playing yet another brilliant innings of 45 off just 38 balls. In another game, Poonam Yadav, the Indian slow leg spinner was also in the limelight with her bowling as she picked the wicket of her compatriot Smriti Mandhana as her team Brisbane Heat Women restricted Mandhana’s Sydney Thunder to 143-7 in their 20 overs. Yadav in total picked three wickets in the game and was a front runner for the Player of the Match award before Georgia Redmayne hit a match-winning fifty to propel the Heat to their fifth win in nine games, which lifted them to second place in the points table.

T20 World Cup 2021 | India knocked out of tournament as New Zealand thrash Afghanistan

Team India got knocked out of the tournament after New Zealand thrashed Afghanistan by eight wickets and got through to the semi-finals. India needed the Afghans to win their last game of the Super 12 phase against the Blackcaps as it would have allowed India an opportunity to level with both them and New Zealand at six points. India had blown both Scotland and Afghanistan in the last two games to improve their run rate in a grand manner but their performances in the first two games against Pakistan and New Zealand turned out to be the crushing blows. India lost to their arch-rivals by a big margin of 10 wickets while the Blackcaps hammered them by eight wickets and pushed them to the brink of elimination. India were one of the hot favorites to win the tournament and their elimination even before the semi-finals will come as big surprise for the fans across the world. Their batsmen never arrived in the tournament and after being blown by Shaheen Shah Afridi in the first game, they could not quite muster aggressive approach with the bat against New Zealand and have paid the price by getting knocked out of the tournament.

Rashid Khan becomes fastest bowler to take 400 wickets in T20 cricket

Afghanistan leg spinner Rashid Khan became the fourth bowler after West Indians Dwayne Bravo, Sunil Narine and South Africa’s Imran Tahir to take 400 wickets in T20 cricket. T20 cricket takes into account all domestic league games along with international T20 matches. Rashid reached the milestone with the wicket of Martin Guptil which he took in Afghanistan’s Super 12 match against New Zealand in the T20 World Cup 2021. The 23-year-old has played only 288 games to reach the 400 mark and thereby has become the fastest to the 400 wickets landmark. Among the players ahead of him, Bravo has 553 wickets in 512 games, Narine has 425 wickets in 383 games and Tahir has played 334 games to pick up 420 wickets. Rashid, who is one of the most famous T20 players going around the world was also awarded the T20 player of the last decade by the International Cricket Council. As far as the game is concerned, New Zealand are 61-2 in the 10 overs, needing 64 from 59 balls to make sure that they reach the semi-finals of the World Cup.