CWC 2019 Recap: Afghanistan end World Cup campaign with unwanted record

A Cricket World series, CWC 2019 Recap looks at all the high-octane encounters from the last year's ODI World Cup: from Jofra Archer's bouncers to Rohit Sharma's hundreds and from Mitchell Starc's yorkers to Virat Kohli's antics.

Match Summary

West Indies 311/6(50 Overs) - Shai Hope77 (92), Nicholas Pooran58 (43); Dawlat Zadran2/73(9), Rashid Khan1/52(10)

Afghanistan 288(50 Overs) - Ikram Alikhil86 (93), Rahmat Shah62 (78); Carlos Brathwaite4/63(9), Kemar Roach3/37(10)

Result - West Indies won by 23 runs

In a dead rubber, all West Indian batsmen except Chris Gayle succeeded. Each of Evin Lewis, Shai Hope, Shimron Hetmyer, Nicholas Pooran and Jason Holder got starts but none of them could go on to make a big one.

Among them, the Pooran-Holder launch towards the end of the innings was the most crucial. The duo added 111 off the final 10 overs and gave the team those 30-35 extra runs that eventually turned out to be the difference. Dawlat Zadran claimed figures of 2/73, but like the other two Afghan pacers, he too was expensive.

Ikram Ali Khil, who had come in as a replacement for Mohammad Shahzad, was promoted at one drop in the chase and the youngster responded well with 86 off 93 deliveries. Rahmat Shah (62) also looked settled at the crease and the two kept Afghanistan in the game. Najibullah and former captain Afghan also got starts but the lower order let them down.

Despite the win, West Indies, after making it to the quarters in the last two World Cups, could not proceed any further than the league stage this time.

With losses in all 10 of their World Cup matches, Afghanistan registered an unwanted record to become the team with the third-most consecutive losses in World Cups with 12 successive defeats behind 18 by Zimbabwe and 14 by Scotland.

Afghanistan v West Indies -  ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, Leeds, 4th July 10:30AM, live cricket streaming action and social media match updates #CWC19