Allah Ghazanfar the newly-minted T20 Emerging Teams Asia Cup champion with Afghanistan A a few weeks ago, showed his magic for the senior side on Wednesday when he ran through the Bangladeshi batting line up like hot knife in butter, picking up 6 wickets for just 26 runs.
Bangladesh were at one point 120/2 before Ghazanfar snapped up 3 wickets in an over and finished with 6 as the visitors collapsed for just 143, handing Afghanistan a 92-run win.
Tanzid Hasan, Mehidy Hasan Miraz, Mushfiqur Rahim, Rishad Hossain, Taskin Ahmed and Shoriful Islam all fell victim to Ghazanfar’s fiery spell.
Ghazanfar was the player of the match in the final against Sri Lanka A in the aforementioned Emerging teams tournament when he had snapped up two wickets to help his team to win their maiden trophy.
The 18-year-old Ghazanfar was a member of the Kolkata Knight Riders squad which went on to win the 2024 Indian Premier League, drafted in for the injured Mujeeb Ur Rahman but did not play a single game for the franchise.
The player had made his international debut for Afghanistan against Ireland when he was just 16 year old and was also part of the U-19 T20 World Cup earlier in the year where his best performance was when he took 3 wickets against New Zealand.
In a chat with ICC’s social media handle during the ICC U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup, Ghazanfar had revealed that his favourite delivery was the carrom ball.
“My favourite cricketer is Ravichandran Anhwin. He’s a world-class crickter and a legend. He bowls so many variations of off-spin bowling. I’m closely monitoring the world’s best,” Ghazanfar told ICC.
He also said that he initially started out as a pace bowler and a batter in tape ball cricket before he joined an academy.
“I practised fast bowling for a month at the academy. But then the coach there started to tell me to bowl spin. When I started bowling spin, the coach saw me and realised I was actually doing well. He really loved some of my variations like carrom ball, google, off spin and back spin. He told me I could become an outstanding bowler one day. And so I started to work on that dream,” he told ICC.
