In the fifth match of the tri-series, on Wednesday (June 17), India-A defeated Afghanistan-A by 101 runs. After batting first, India-A scored 319 runs for 9 wickets in 50 overs. In reply, Afghanistan, which came out for chase, was all out for 218 runs in 36.5 overs. With this victory, Team India has kept alive its hopes of reaching the finals of the series.

Captain Tilak Verma played the biggest innings for India-A, batting first, scoring 59 runs in 75 balls with 5 fours. Apart from this, Priyansh Arya and Kumar Kushagra played innings of 58-58 runs. The team’s star batsman Vaibhav Suryavanshi failed to play a big innings. Vaibhav scored 38 runs in 28 balls by hitting 4 fours and 2 sixes.

Till now not even a single fifty has been seen from Vaibhav’s bat in the series. In four matches he has scored 14, 44, 21 and 38 runs respectively. He has been able to reach only the figure of 117 in 4 matches.

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Afghanistan-e-fuss in chase

Afghanistan A team, which came on the field for the chase, looked restless. Bahir Shah played the biggest innings for the team and scored 57 runs by hitting 4 fours and 1 six in 52 balls. Four batsmen of the team could not even cross the double figures, and even those who did could not complete big innings. During this period, Nishant Sindhu took maximum 4 wickets for India. Apart from this, Yash Thakur took 2 wickets. Rest Anukul Roy, Suryansh Shedge, Vipraj Nigam and Anshul Kamboj took 1 wicket each.

India A’s hope for the final remains intact

With the victory, Team India has come on top in the points table. The team has 4 points and a net run rate of +0.797. Second placed Sri Lanka also has 4 points, but is below India due to net run rate. After this, Afghanistan is at third place with 2 points. Team India has played all four league matches.

Sri Lanka and Afghanistan have played 3-3 matches. Both have to play the last match against each other. If Sri Lanka wins this match, then the final will be between India A and Sri Lanka. If Afghanistan wins, all three teams will have 4 points each. In this situation, there will be a title match between the top-2 teams with the best net run rate.

Also read: IND vs AFG: Top-7 captains who played the biggest innings for India, Shubman Gill’s name included in the list