By Edmund J. Rogers 
The Afghan team recorded its second victory in the history of the ODI Cricket World Cup and the first victory in an ODI World Cup match against a full Member of the ICC or a test member after comfortably beating the defending champions England by 69 runs in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023.
Before this thirteenth match of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 in India, no one would imagine that Afghanistan would stun the defending champions in this way.
The Arun Jaitley Stadium (Delhi) hosted this match in which the England captain Jos Buttler chose to take the field first after winning the toss.
England vs Afghanistan: Afghanistan got off to a good start and scored 284 runs
The Afghan openers got off to a good start by setting up the opening partnership of 114 runs in 16.4 overs. While opener Ibrahim Zadran scored 28 runs, his compatriot Rahmanullah Gurbaz batted hard and scored 80 off 57 balls (eight fours and four sixes) before an innings.
On his return, wicketkeeper-batsman Ikram Alikhil scored the crucial 58 runs in 66 balls with the help of three fours and two sixes. After the initial partnership broke down, Afghanistan was losing ground at regular intervals, as they used to action 190/6.
While Ikram scored crucial runs at the end of the innings, Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman enjoyed significant support with 23 and 28 runs respectively.
Finally, Afghanistan got 284 runs in total in 49.5 overs. It was Afghanistan’s second-highest ODI World Cup total after 288 all-outs against the West Indies in the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup.
Among the English bowlers, bowler Adil Rashid took three wickets (3/37), while right-arm fast bowler Mark Wood took two wickets (2/50).
England vs Afghanistan: Good Afghan bowling forced a horrible batting performance in England
In response, the Afghan bowlers never gave the opportunity to reassure the English batsmen, as the defending champions regularly lost ground from the start of the innings.
Only Harry Brook showed some recovery with the impressive 66 runs in 61 balls with the help of seven fours and only six. However, he did not have strong support from his partner while opener Dawid Malan was the second highest scorer in this innings with 32 runs, and the lowest ranked Adil Rashid (20) was the only other to reach the 20-run mark in this terrible innings.
England were bowled out for 215 runs in 40.3 overs as the Afghans claimed a big win. At the end of the match, Afghanistan beat England by 69 runs.
All the Afghan bowlers delivered a solid performance, where spinners Rashid Khan (3/37), Mujeeb-ur-Rahman (3/51) and Mohammad Nabi (2/16) shared eight wickets. The leaders Fazalhaq Farooqi (1/50) and Naveen-ul-Haq (1/44) also took crucial ground each.
Mujeeb-ur-Rahman won the Man of the match award for his crucial performances in all aspects (28 runs in 16 balls and 10-1-51-3).
It was Afghanistan’s second victory in the history of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup. Their first such victory came against Scotland in Dunedin in a group stage match at the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup.
It was Afghanistan’s first victory against a full ICC Member or a test member in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.
England became the first team in the history of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup to lose to all current full or test members of the ICC. In this regard, when they suffered a defeat to Ireland in the group stage of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, the Irish team was not a full member of the ICC.