Afghanistan hold their nerve, UAE go down fighting in nail-biting finish

Afghanistan had the game sewn up. They were playing a second-string side with even their captain Rashid Khan among six players sitting out. But Asif Khan threatened to rip it wide open. A dead rubber had burst to life. Fareed Ahmad started the final over with 16 to defend and was bashed for 4 and 6 off the first two deliveries. An upset was looming and the left-arm quick felt it. Asif felt it, batting on 40 off 25. It never came to be.

Fareed had three chances to influence the outcome and he came up with the perfect option each time to close out the match: 4, 6, 2, dot, dot, wicket. And so, UAE ended the tri-series winless but they came so very close. The emotions at the end were excruciating, particularly for Asif and the captain Muhammad Waseem. They're going to make the Asia Cup very interesting.

Ibrahim Zadran was captaining Afghanistan for the 10th time in his career. Four of those games were against UAE. It is easy to see why he was the stand-in. He was cool when the runs didn't come - 5 off 9 - and resplendent when they did. He looks so technically correct that even the shots in anger carried a stamp of class.

There was one moment when he looked totally out of place though. He was utterly deceived by left-arm spinner Haider Ali's change of pace and trajectory - the flatter ball making the batter think he should play back when the length was fairly full. Ibrahim lost his stumps for 48 off 34. He might feel a lot better about his contributions in the pointy end of the chase, where soon after he went up to have an arm around Fareed, the bowler switched from bowling over the wicket to round the wicket and gave away no more runs.

It was a slow pitch and it showed when Afghanistan lost three wickets in 3.1 overs after a 98-run opening partnership. Karim Janat was 10 off seven balls at the time. He hit the only boundary during this spell too - a six, which are sometimes easier to pull off in these conditions especially against a bowling attack that didn't camp in the good length spot for long enough. Often, they were too full or too short and that allowed Janat and the rest of his team-mates down the order to get underneath the ball.

So it didn't matter that overs 13, 14 and 15 went for only 16 runs. The next three yielded 36. Afghanistan finished on a healthy 170 for 4. Haider (2 for 23) and Simranjeet Singh (1 for 24) were the pick of the bowlers. Left-arm quick Muhammad Rohid was desperately unlucky with both of UAE's dropped catches coming off his bowling. Rahmanullah Gurbaz enjoyed his second life going from 14 off 16 to 40 off 38.

UAE took to the chase with gusto, scoring almost twice as many boundaries as Afghanistan did in the powerplay (7 vs 4). Waseem was enchanting, depositing Mujeeb Ur Rahman inside out over cover for six. He produced another lovely piece of innovation, upper-cutting the debutant Abdollah Ahmadzai over deep third as he stalks Rohit Sharma on top of the six-hitters' table in T20Is and it was looking like UAE had the firepower to earn the consolation win that they desperately wanted.

However, in trying the same shot, Waseem feathered an edge behind and the greenest member of a side that was saving most of its firepower for the final had punched through an opening. Afghanistan rallied to turn an equation that read 67 off 48 balls into a rather more troubling 43 off 18. Mujeeb and Noor Ahmad, bowling in tandem from the 14th to the 17th overs, were virtually unhittable. Then it was the debutant's turn but Abdollah leaked 16 runs all to Asif and the UAE bench started to stir.

Four more boundaries - one of them a dropped catch - across the last two overs kept the contest alive and created tension among the Afghanistan coaching staff but in the end, they just about squeezed through.