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DELIVERING WORLD-CLASS EVENTS // ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP QUALIFIER 2018
ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP QUALIFIER 2018
matches to Scotland, Zimbabwe and Hong Kong but then hit a purple patch memorable March evening in Harare.
OPPOSITE: The victorious Afghanistan team after winning The ICC Cricket
Men’s ODI Team Rankings, the Windies and Afghanistan were the pre-tournament favourites 2018 and get to the marquee event: the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
ride to get there, with almost all the other teams punching above their weight at various stages of the tournament and more than one other team – close to glory.
Results-wise, it was a thrillingly topsy-turvy a surprise result, with Scotland emphatically beating Afghanistan by seven wickets, and with and Hong Kong, it seemed that Afghanistan their hopes faintly alive, but that single victory would not have been enough to qualify for the Kong in the penultimate group game to give Afghanistan a second wind.
If the group stage was kept alive right up until the last day of matches, so the same applied in the Super Sixes. Finding form, Afghanistan won all of their matches but were still behind from the league phase. Enter the United Arab Emirates. Their surprise victory over the crestfallen hosts on the last day of the Super Sixes propelled Afghanistan into the top two, the UK in late May 2019.
up missing out on a World Cup berth for the a sequence broken at nine appearances. That Sikandar Raza, the outstanding performer in the competition, was named Player of the Tournament was scant consolation.
The Windies had fewer issues. Four wins from four matches in the group stage – though by no means all of them comfortably, with the captain Jason Holder’s 99* rescuing his side in the two more wins in the next phase, were enough match-up against Afghanistan, the main goal had been achieved: the two-time world champions would be appearing again in the ICC World Cup.
It was overall an outstanding tournament. Fiercely contested, with no discernible chasm in quality from the top two to the bottom few, the competition contained innumerable subplots and at times heartrending drama. The Windies, world champions in 1975 and 1979, were there, resurgent cricketing nation, were hosting. Ireland,
“It was overall an outstanding tournament. Fiercely
contested, with no discernible chasm in quality from the top two to the bottom few.”
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