A collective performance by the Indian batters guided the side to a powerful 349-run score against Afghanistan A on Thursday, June 11. Notably, the Indian A side is currently touring Sri Lanka for the Tri Nation A series. The Men in Blue kicked off their campaign by recording an eight-run win over Sri Lanka A in the opening game of the series. In their second clash, they locked horns with Afghanistan, and batting first, posted a mammoth target of 350 runs for their competitors.
After being invited to bat first, the Tilak Varma-led side got off to an explosive start. Prabhsimran Singh, who could only manage to score two runs in the series opener, made a staggering comeback and posted 84 runs for the side. His fellow opener Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, though couldn’t complete his fifty, came up with a 44-run knock. Priyansh Arya failed to contribute much but the middle order once again came to the team’s rescue.
Ruturaj Gaikwad and skipper Varma came up with their respective fifties to add 66 runs to the board, each. Ayush Badoni was forced to walk back on a duck, whereas Suryansh Shedge added 40 runs. Apart from them, Anukul Roy remained not out at 16, while Arshad Khan, Vipraj Nigam and Anshul Kamboj added 1, 8, and 0*, respectively.
Afghanistan needed to score 294 runs in 38 overs
In a rain-affected game, the Imran Mir-led side were asked to chase 294 runs from 38 overs following downpour. As of writing, they were batting at 17-0 in 2.4 overs with skipper Mir at 2* (5), and Hassan Eisakhil at 13* (12). Coming back to the Indian side, Shedge opened up on his knock while also spoke about the impactful 70-run partnership he built with Varma. "The wind factor was obviously on the back of my mind because they have long boundaries,” said Shedge in the innings break.
“It was not easy to clear the boundary. Keeping that into consideration, the only thing I was looking to do is if the ball isn't in my arc, I'll look for twos and I think I ran a lot of twos and that helped me at the end. Obviously, we were eyeing to score above 340,” he added. “We were taking turns, because of the wind, we couldn't hit from both the ends. We were trying to score above 9 or 10 runs every over,” Shedge said about the partnership.
