It's time for us to walk off as well. Thanks for your company and your comments. See you tomorrow
"Our country is praying for us and that's why we're winning," says Stanikzai, "Today was a great performance. Specially Shahzad and Nabi. Guys are doing well, hopefully we'll keep trying our best and if we win two more matches we will go straight away into the semi-final" Appreciates the crowd support after that and walks off
said bakhtiar s: "Unbelievable !!!!!!!! Fir works in jala abad and in all Afghanistan"
"In the end too many runs given away. Tough day. They came really hard, took their chances and came off for them," Preston Mommsen says, "That is the plan always, to target the opposition. Had specific plans for each batter. But they played spin better than we did. And they hit the big shots really well. We wanted to bowl the majority of overs with spin, left-arm spin. But we didn't keep the boundary could down. It is a tournament, it's quite a short one. The important thing is to peak at the right team. We were good against UAE, below par the last two days. We have a bit of a rest, go back to the drawing board, check the team combination as well"
Mohammad Shahzad is the Man of the Match for his 75 off 36 balls. "Happy that we've won, three consecutive wins as well. Straight boundaries were very short and I wanted to exploit that. And not hitting against the wind. Our targets was rotating strike and waiting for loose delivery to hit every ball out of the ground. [So was every ball a bad ball?] Ah, yes. [laughs] Pitch was very good for batting, that's why we got the 200. Hope we qualify to the World T20 on the back of this"
The crowd fill onto the field, mostly Aghanistan fans who rush to their team for a few handshakes. Flags in tow. Selfie time, Celebration time. Contemplation time. "Come on," yells Shazad into the camera. It was his blistering innings that set this win up. Took the total too far beyond Scotland's reach. Indeed 210 is the most Afghanistan have ever made in a T20 game.
Scotland needed a big innings. They got a couple of cameos, strung some dangerous partnerships as well. But they were facing a much better bowling attack. The seamers were bowling full as epitomised by Hamid Hassan's yorkers, he got 3 for 29. He also seems to be struggling with a back problem. Mirwais Ashraf was hard to get away. And Mohammad Nabi bowled some clever off spin to finish with 3 for 25.