Rajinikanth and Indian cricket team star Ravichandran Ashwin© AFP/Twitter
The Asia Cup 2023 is already underway, with four teams already playing a match each. While India and Pakistan are the heavyweights and favourites to reach the final, the other teams are no pushovers. Afghanistan cane be the dark horse in the tournament. In the last few years they have shown the capability to shine against more fancied opponents. India cricket team star spinner Ravichandran Ashwin praised their team. To add to that, he compared two of Afghanistan stars with Rajinikanth’s character in the movie ‘Jailer’
“We can divide the Afghanistan team into two parts. They have the X-factor for sure. On their day they can beat any team in the Asia Cup as well as the World Cup. Because they have the muscle to do that. They might not have XI match winners in their side, but they have 5-6 players out of their eleven that can scare their opponent with their ‘tiger ka hukum’ performances,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
“Let us look at their ‘tiger ka hukum’ match-winners. Rahmanullah Gurbaz. He is not the like the first half Thalaivar in ‘Jailer’ when he causally bring a dead body to Yogi Babu‘s car. He is more like the second half Thalaivar, when he goes and gives a warning directly. Be it is pickup pulls or his tempo of the games, he has got the game to completely transform the state of a match with his batting at the international level. He has not problem against the short ball. Inside the powerplay, he is the x-factor player.
“The only problem is if he takes the aggressive approach and fails, do they have other to match him and put runs on the board? But he has an ideal foil in Ibrahim Zadran. He is more like our Thalaivar, who accompanies Yogi Babu in the first half. He gets the job done silently.
“Afghanistan’s batting when there is swing or seam is a big question mark.”
Afghanistan’s first match is against Bangladesh on September 3.
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