Afghanistan increased their prospects of making the World Cup semi-finals on Friday by thrashing the Netherlands by seven wickets.
Afghanistan won the tournament with four wins, adding to previous victories against Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the reigning champions England. They were chasing 180 to win, and they reached their target with 111 balls remaining.
With eight points presently, they are level with Australia and New Zealand, who hold two of the semi-final qualification spots.
India, who are still unbeaten, have already guaranteed their place in the final four, and South Africa is nearly a lock to follow.
Next up for Afghanistan on Tuesday is a potential grudge match against five-time champions Australia.
In January, Australia controversially cancelled a series against Afghanistan in protest, they claimed, at the Taliban’s treatment of women.
Rahmat Shah hit his third successive half-century for Afghanistan while skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi made an undefeated 56, also his third fifty in a row.
Rahmat had scored 77 against Pakistan and 62 in the win over Sri Lanka.
On Friday, he hit a 54-ball 52 with eight fours and shared a 74-run third wicket partnership with Hashmatullah after openers Rahmanullah Gurbaz (10) and Ibrahim Zadran (20) had departed cheaply.
Rahmat fell, caught and bowled by Saqib Zulfiqar with 129 on the board and his team well set for victory.
Hashmatullah’s 56 came off 64 balls and followed his 80 against India and 58 in the match with Sri Lanka.
Earlier, Afghanistan restricted error-plagued Netherlands to 179 all out.
After winning the toss and choosing to bat, the Netherlands, who had a remote chance of making it to the semi-finals, were destroyed when four of their batsmen were run out.
They bounced back as spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman removed 39-year-old opener Wesley Barresi in the opening over.
When a string of misfortunes placed them on the back foot, Max O’Dowd and Colin Ackermann put up 70 for the second wicket.
O’Dowd was down 42 when Azmatullah Omarzai struck him directly from the fine leg.
With the score on 92-2, Ackermann (29) failed to make his ground when Ikram Alikhil whipped off the bails from a smart throw by Rashid Khan.
On the next delivery, skipper Scott Edwards swept, lost sight of the ball and as he wandered aimlessly out of his crease Alikhil ran him out without scoring.
Then, Noor Ahmad, a teenage wrist spinner, and Muhammad Nabi dismissed Saqib Zulfiqar and Bas de Leede, while wicketkeeper Alikhil cleverly stumped Logan van Beek.
After failing to beat Nabi’s throw from midwicket, Sybrand Engelbrecht became the fourth run-out of the innings with a score of 58 and six fours.
The Dutch were then bowled out after 46.3 overs with a score of 152-8.
The best bowler was Nabi, an experienced off-spinner who took 3-28.
“When the pressure is on the batsman you know they will make mistakes and bad calls. So that helped us get the four run-outs,” said Nabi.
