Afghanistan's hopes washed away
Also, notes on Sediqullah Atal, Azmatullah Omarzai, Travis Head, Ibrahim Zadran and Katey Martin's commentary
The Afghanitoss
Today, Afghanistan won the toss and decided to bat. Now, I know they love this. They think their middle order batting slowly can cause big problems in chases, and not as much when they bat first. Then their strength is the bowling, and they can clamp down on teams. I have heard Jonathan Trott (and AFG coaches/captains before) say this. They are one of few teams who regularly win the toss and bat first in T20s as well. This is their thing.
If you look at their results in the last three years of ODIs, they have a 51.2% win record. They haven’t played as many associates in that time, so it holds up well.
When they win the toss, they bat 62.5% of the time. Again, that makes a lot of sense; they do what they tell us they want to do.
But when they win the toss and bat first, they only win 30.8% of the time. When they bat second, it’s 75%. They are 6-2 in eight matches batting second. And my guess is that for each of these games there was probably a reason to go against their programming. Maybe it was the pitch, dew or the opposition.
Today, the opposition meant that it made sense to bat first. Nothing else did. The covers had been sweating for almost two days, and had the Australians not bowled too wide, or had any luck at all, they could have taken a load of wickets. But there was always rain scheduled for later, which is a double issue for Afghanistan. Their spinners are their main weapons, so that means that Australia was likely to get a decent start in the powerplay no matter what. So unless the rain was brilliantly timed, they should have been above the DLS. But more than that, if you have spinners, and it’s scheduled to rain later, is bowling second with that threat a good idea?
This was a bowl first game, and they didn’t.
Australia’s search for wickets
It might sound weird, but not long back the Australian team was pretty defensive when bowling, though not up top with Starc (or anytime he bowled really). But even Adam Zampa was treated more like a defensive option. Zampa seemed to change on his own, but around him, the team still focused more on stopping runs than taking wickets.
Weirdly, the other teams got more attacking at the same time. Australia seemed to change during the 2023 World Cup. When they bowled defensively it was to funkier fields. But they also seemed to take more risks with short balls and trying something attacking.
Afghanistan got a decent start today, all things considered. But things changed when the spinners came on. I feel bad for Ibrahim Zadran; he survived the tricky initial period and got out to a poor ball by Zampa.
Their finger spinners were in complete control of the strike rate. But that is what Afghanistan want. Finger spin, in the middle overs, keep their wickets in hand, and then slog against the pace at the death with set batters.
So Australia took off their spinners and went with pace. It didn’t work (partly because they forgot to review an LBW). But it shows they have a different way of thinking now. And against Afghanistan they were really attacking, which is the best option. They want the opposition to let them score slow, and Australia didn’t. But Afghanistan didn’t get to their normal 200/3, and really, Australia made them collapse. In the end, it was just one great knock from Azmatullah Omarzai who pushed them to a good total.
Sediqullah Atal’s scoring zones, strike rate vs pace and spin and true 0s to 6s
I had this theory that Sediqullah Atal was a bad starter. But we looked at his median scores (30 in ODIs, about 25 in T20s), and it doesn’t seem to hold up. However, I have seen him play early on in his innings, and at times it feels like he hasn’t seen a cricket ball before. He struck at just under 60 in the powerplay, but at nearly 110 after that.
The left-hander was particularly dominant in the covers and fine leg against pace. He seems to have a few different scoring options against it. He scored 24 runs in the V versus spin - but it seems fairly one-dimensional. If this is a consistent pattern, an analyst could go back and look at what the problem is.
His strike rate against pace today was slightly better than his career mark, but the key difference was in how he went against spin. He did get stuck against Short’s offspin, scoring 6 off 16, but was fine against Maxwell. He scored at more than 1.5 runs per ball against Zampa.
These numbers are from the five innings he played before the Champions Trophy. He rotated strike quite well against pace - 18% above par on 1s and 56% on 2s & 3s, while also facing 11% fewer dots than expected. Although he was 2% below par on fours, he was 26% ahead when it comes to sixes.
He’s an above average strike rotator against spin, but faces 4% more dots than par. However, you can clearly see that he scored way fewer boundaries against spin than expected – particularly fours. Today, he hit only one four against spin, but smashed three sixes.
We don’t usually see players like him from Afghanistan. It’s actually good for them, because if they have a great player of pace they could pick a couple of spin-specialists as well.
Azmatullah Omarzai is good at ODI batting
Australia eventually went with a field where they had backward point, deep cover and long off. I have seen that to Sanju Samson and Suresh Raina. Not many players get that field, unless you’re bowling wide yorkers. He was caught out to deep cover.
It will be interesting to see if other teams have a go at him with this plan. He does feel very offside dependent at times, and he’s still developing as a player. At one point, I thought because he knows the field, he will step outside off stump and flick it to the legside for a free boundary. He didn’t - he tried to hit it over covers for six.
Today, Omarzai faced eight balls of offspin and 10 off legspin, scoring at a run a ball against each and hitting two sixes. The majority of his deliveries came against the quicks. He hit one four and five sixes in his 63 balls. So, I wanted to see if today was an outlier or a trend.
Against pace, he’s 7% up on scoring fours, but 22% on sixes. But this is even more stark against spin – 34% below mean on fours, but 124% up on sixes. Clearly, the man loves six-hitting. He’s slightly under par as a strike rotator against pace. He is 9% up on 1s against spin, but somehow doesn’t get many 2s & 3s. He is like a modern Afghanistan player against pace, while he seems to hit everything for six against spin like old Afghanistan players.
Since 2022, he has been one of the top batters in terms of true average – only Travis Head and Shubman Gill are ahead of him. His true strike rate is similar to David Miller, Daryl Mitchell and Scott Edwards. He was the Men’s ODI Player of the Year in 2024. I think in T20 cricket, he seems to go too hard at times from ball one. He can bat properly, and he doesn’t need to think of himself as a hitter. This shows what his ceiling is.
Ibrahim Zadran’s brain
Sadly for Afghanistan, their latest star Ibrahim Zadran got himself in. And then, as the innings was about to go on for long - which is what he loves to do - he got out to a poor ball by Zampa.
But how he batted in the early part of the game when the ball was doing a lot just shows how smart he is. Sediqullah was trying to whack the ball around, and Zadran was just getting to the other end.
You might be thinking if is this part of Jarrod Kimber’s agenda to let you know that Ibrahim Zadran is the real deal. And it is. But also, Afghanistan batters have never been like this. We’re a few years on from the ‘they’re all number eights’ argument I once made. But even their more talented batters are still very basic. He has the technique, the eye and the smarts of a top-level batter.
At one stage, with the ball swinging in, he knocked it to the left of the fielder and took a single. He kept his eye on the ball the entire time, put his bat in the crease and prepared for a two. Some of their other batters hit the ball to the right hand, past the fielder, take the run and just tune out.
Lots of Afghan batters can play a cover drive, but Zadran has the entire package.
Afghanistan’s bowling today
The ball was swinging a lot, but Afghanistan were all over the shop. Omarzai bowled a really good first over. Fazalhaq Farooqi couldn’t control the ball. They dropped two catches, and by the time they took a catch the pressure was off Australia. After that, Steve Smith came in and hit fours off his first two balls. Australia would have probably won this game fairly easily if it went on.
Travis Head is one of the quickest starters in the format
The Afghan bowlers were trying to the hit the top of off, and they just kept getting it wrong. The ball kept going down the legside, and he was helping the ball away. You’ve got to be accurate against Head, or catch him. He scored 38 out of 59 runs on the legside, with 26 of those towards forward square leg and backward square leg.
Travis Head takes the second-fewest balls after Rohit Sharma to get a half-century. The global median in this time period is 56, so he’s about 13 balls quicker.
He is also the second-fastest starter, with a true strike rate of 35 in his first 30 balls. Again, only high-intent Rohit is ahead.
When the field is up, he has the third-best true strike rate and fifth-best true average. He has managed to find a way to outdo Rahmat Shah on true average and David Warner on true strike rate.
The Katey Martin effect
Cricket commentary has been pretty poor for a long time.Ex-players who don’t watch a lot of the game, produced by people afraid to train them to be better, is the biggest reason, as is just getting people who were once stars over them being great communicators. And because of how cricket is structured, most commentators are not full-time, so they never get the chance to improve anyway. So what we have is word salad, clichés and laziness too often.
A few years ago I was watching some cricket in New Zealand and heard a new voice. I instantly thought this is someone who can really communicate and understands the conversation part of it, but is also good at bringing in the right analysis in a clear manner when it is needed. I contacted a friend and he told me it was someone called Katey Martin.
That name was kind of familiar, but not instantly, and it turned out I had covered heaps of her matches. I didn’t remember her face or much of her career. And unlike most commentators, I also have never met her.
So I have no skin in the game at all when I say, she is probably the most interesting TV cricket commentator in the world right now (really impressed with Shane Watson as well). Her ability to add information, understand what fans need to hear, while still remaining a great communicator and working well off her co-commentators stands out. That makes her high quality in so many different parts of the job. She doesn’t have one of the great voices like Mel Jones or David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd. But in every other way, she is fantastic.
She can pick up footwork changes, but also understands when to bring them up, and then explains it in a way a child can understand, without talking down. She can then segway from that into a running commentary joke, or even just insert herself back into normal commentary. In a smarter, better run cricket world, she would be part of the A team of many commentary productions around the world.
Think about how good she is to be a small name women’s player from New Zealand in a world when simply being a known former men’s cricketer is usually what gets you the position. She doesn’t rely on reputation or her playing career, just the quality of her work.
We all moan about commentary, and we’re often right. It could, and should, be better. But we don’t talk up the good things when they happen. Katey Martin was in my notes for usually whacking the ball a little and for being an old-school keeper who wasn’t a frontline batter. She had a good career, but has started her new one way better.