Afghanistan will look to shrug off the defeat against Pakistan and look to return to winning ways in an ICC men’s T20 World Cup match against debutants Namibia on Sunday. The match will be played at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi. For Namibia, they will be seeking to maintain their dream run in the tournament.

Armed with world-class spin, Afghanistan can become a tricky team. Apart from spin maestro Rashid Khan, Afghanistan have the likes of Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi in their ranks.

The formidable spin attack’s prowess has been on full display in their first two matches. While they completely bamboozled Scotland in their tournament opener victory, they pushed an in-form Pakistan side to the brink on Friday night.

Backing their spinners are the Afghan batters, who are playing a fearless brand of cricket reminiscent of the big-hitting West Indies side.

Afghanistan batter showed no signs of weakness as they hit the Pakistani owlers cleanly for boundaries. However, losing wickets at regular intervals did them in. Mohammad Nabi and Gulbadin Naib added 71 in the last 45 balls to post a challenging total. Had they added 20 runs more to their total, it would have been difficult for Pakistan to chase.

Captain Nabi has asserted that the team’s morale is high going into their third fixture despite the five-wicket loss to Pakistan.

“We have only played two games and we won one (against Scotland) and today was a close game, at the end Pakistan won the game.

“There are a lot of positive things in this game, we will take the positive things and there are three more games. Inshallah we will do well, the team morale is high,” he said.

Namibia, on the other hand, will hope to continue its historic run. The country which has a population of 2.5 million and only five cricket pitches has surprised everyone in the tournament.

After handing defeats to Netherlands and Ireland in the qualifiers, the team has managed to script a memorable win over Scotland in their first Super 12 game.

While their bowlers did a good job to restrict Scotland to 109, their batters had to dig deep to chase the target.

“From here on we have to lift our level. We are excited for the challenge. Hopefully, we can execute on those days,” Erasmus had said after the match against Scotland.

Teams (from):

Afghanistan: Rashid Khan, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Hazratullah Zazai, Usman Ghani, Asghar Afghan, Mohammad Nabi (c), Najibullah Zadran, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Mohammad Shahzad, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Karim Janat, Gulbadin Naib, Naveen-ul-Haq, Hamid Hassan, Fareed Ahmad.

Namibia: Gerhard Erasmus (c), Stephen Baard, Karl Birkenstock. Michau du Preez, Jan Frylinck, Zane Green, Nicol Lofie-Eaton, Bernard Scholtz, Ben Shikongo, JJ Smit, Ruben Trumpelmann, Michael van Lingen, David Wiese, Craig Williams and Pikky Ya France.

The match starts 3:30 PM IST.