admin
Sports Reporter
IT’S being called the Miracle of Kingston with Afghanistan writing one of the biggest fairytales in the history of cricket by qualifying for their first ICC World Cup semi-final on Wednesday in Jamaica.
Zimbabwean umpire Langton Rusere was one of the two officials who were on the field as Afghanistan beat Bangladesh by eight runs (DLS method) in a rain-interrupted match.
The other umpire was India’s Nitin Menon, who had two decisions overturned, in this low-scoring thriller.
Rusere got all his decisions right, including the final lbw when Naveen Ul Haq was trapped first ball as Afghanistan sealed a famous win.
They will play South Africa in the semi-finals in Trinidad today ahead of the final on Saturday.
The other semi-final features England and India.
Rusere’s profile has been rising and, while he will play no part in the remainder of the tournament, he will return home happy with his performance at the OCC T20 World Cup.
He will remember this battle for the rest of his life and it twisted and turned until Afghanistan found a way to win it and make history.
Three times Afghanistan were on a hat-trick during the match.
“It’s a dream for us to be in the semi-finals. The way we started the tournament, the belief came when we beat New Zealand,” said skipper Rashid Khan.
“It’s unbelievable. The only guy who put us in the semi-finals was Brian Lara and we proved him right.
“When we met him at a welcome party, I told him we won’t let you down. We thought 130-135 was a good score but we fell 15 runs short.
“We knew they would come hard at us and we knew that is what we could take advantage of. We didn’t need to do anything extra, just be clear in our plans.
“We wanted to make people back home happy, that was the discussion we had and everyone did a wonderful job.”
He added:
“In T20s if you get a good start, it helps us in the middle overs. They have given great starts to us in the whole competition.
“It makes it easier for us to go harder at the batsmen. They have delivered, they were very clear in their minds.”
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter