UAE vs AFG 3rd T20 Match Prediction

UAE vs AFG Team Previews

United Arab Emirates

UAE has a pretty horrific track record against full-member nations and that’s why most cricket pundits had predicted a whitewash for them in this series. However, the hosts overcame some pretty long odds to make a comeback and level the series by winning the second match of the tournament.

Chasing a tricky target of 138 on a slow wicket, Muhammad Waseem and Vriitya Aravind put together a brilliant opening stand of 119 runs and stunned the visitors by registering a 9-wicket win. Muhammad Waseem played a brilliant inning of 91 runs but missed out on a well-deserved century.

Captain Chundangapoyil Rizwan was the top-scorer for UAE in the opening match and will be hoping to play yet another good inning here. The team has a couple of good all-rounders in the form of Rohan Mustafa and Afzal Khan who can score important runs lower down the order.

The pace attack will be led by Junaid Siddique and Zahoor Khan, while Rohan Mustafa and Basil Hameed are the two spinners in the squad. 

Afghanistan

Afghanistan has opted for a new-look squad for this series as some of the veterans including Mohammad Nabi, Usman Ghani, Darwish Rasooli, and Qais Ahmad missed out on this tour. Instead, the team management included some promising young players like Zahir Khan, Rahmat Khan, and Nijaat Masood. At least 5 players from the 18-member squad had played fewer than 5 T20s before the series started.

That didn’t seem much of an issue as Afghanistan won their opening match. While the match had a much closer finish than what the visitors would have liked, they still gained an early lead by chasing down the 143-run target in the final over. However, they weren’t so lucky in the second match as the hosts coasted through with a thumping 9-wicket win.

Afghanistan has a strong batting line-up and will be hoping to set up a big target for the hosts in this last match. Afsar Zazai and Karim Janat are in decent form, with the latter scoring a half-century in the first game, and leading his team to a win. The top-order batsmen including Hazratullah Zazai, Najibullah Zadran, and Rahmanullah Gurbaz seem to be struggling a bit at the moment but will be hoping to turn things around on Sunday. Rashid Khan was very economical in the last match but went wicketless despite having a pitch that was favorable to the slower bowlers.

The visitors will be banking on the pace duo of Azmatullah Omarzai and Naveen ul-Haq to give them early breakthroughs.