England limped, Afghanistan ran

If you didn't know anything about these two cricket teams and were just watching this game as an outsider, which team would you think is the professional one with a rich history and lots of money?

Ibrahim Zadran can bat. It's not always quick, but it's steady and there are always runs. There's technique and brains. He knows what he's doing. And if this was a poor bowling side, it wouldn't always matter. He probably wouldn't score quick enough to always put pressure back on.

But this team can seriously bowl. So their whole plan is to let him and Rahmanullah Gurbaz just do their thing at the top. Then if they're anywhere near par, they think they can hold with their bowlers. It's not a brilliant tactic and not all teams will be able to do it, but it fits Afghanistan really well. Bat first, bat steady, hold with the ball.

Because they've done this so many times in T20 and ODI cricket, every single player in the Afghanistan lineup at the moment knows exactly what their role is. Because this is a team that actually still plays a lot of ODI cricket when many others don't, and they take it really seriously.

Like, they didn't turn up at this tournament and just chuck Jamie Smith in at number three to see what happens, right? This is a well-drilled 50 over machine, whereas England are a bit of a clown car.

That's why one team is limping out of the tournament, while the other one is running to their next game.

So I was listening to the BBC at lunch of this game, and something really interesting was going on. They were talking about a documentary they made about the Afghanistan women's team. It's an incredible story, you should all go over and check out that documentary.

But it's really interesting, because when you think about it, the BBC, ECB and the MCC are backing the Afghanistan women's team. All the important English acronyms are backing it. And this conversation is happening while the Afghanistan men's team, who doesn't have that level of professionalism or history or money within the game is out on the field completely whacking the men's team everywhere. Even if the English team had got home in that chase, you'd have to say that they got pretty embarrassed by the Afghanistan batting beforehand.

If you didn't know anything about these two cricket teams and were just watching this game as an outsider, which team would you think is the professional one with a rich history and lots of money?