Ibrahim Zadran goes from staid to spectacular to finish England off
After an injury layoff and a few low scores, Ibrahim Zadran repays Afghanistan’s faith with a match-winning century in a crucial game
Danyal Rasool26-Feb-20252:22
Knight: Ibrahim showed he is good against pace as well
Ibrahim Zadran walked over to the practice nets, probably wondering what he was doing in Greater Noida. Afghanistan were supposed to be two days into a Test match against New Zealand, and the toss was yet to happen. Even his presence on these practice pitches was downright dangerous, the top layer of soil underfoot was unstable, every step presenting a hazard. Like a horror movie cliché where the jump scare is foreshadowed by an extended period of disquieting dread, what he feared happened. His ankle sank into the slush and turned over; it would be nearly four months before he played again. Seriously, what was he doing out here?That question took on a slightly different tone half-an-hour into Afghanistan’s ‘eliminator’ against England in Lahore. The crowd was beginning to fill up and, unlike England’s game against Australia here at the Gaddafi Stadium, they knew precisely what they wanted. The sea of Afghan flags left little doubt.But, and Zadran will know this, few who tune in to watch an Afghan innings from the first ball do it to watch him bat. But Rahmanullah Gurbaz had been sent back early after England muffled him with hard lengths in the first four overs before Jofra Archer punished him for static feet by going full and cleaning him up.Related
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Zadran 177, Omarzai five-wicket haul knock England out
It was the sixth over, and Zadran had managed two runs. Afghanistan’s faith in him had shown no signs of wavering but Zadran’s form hadn’t been helped by the enforced injury layoff. No half-century in nine white-ball games and, despite six of them being T20s, just one innings where he scored at better than a run-a-ball. With two off 14 balls, this was very much an innings in his recent mould.Mark Wood fired another one into the pitch, and Zadran deflected this away to third, perhaps too close to third. Archer, who against Australia crucially put down Alex Carey midway through a crucial chase, didn’t put in the dive that perhaps would have made the distance, and watched the ball sail over for six. The following over, Archer, perhaps catalysed at ceding that half-chance, went full and fast at him. Zadran lashed one away through the off side, before creaming a straight drive past mid-off. When Archer banged it in again, he just dropped his hands.Perhaps it’s because he opens with Gurbaz, but Afghanistan don’t need Zadran to come out flying. His strike rate in the low 80s is positively quaint by modern standards; just four of his 34 innings before today had come at better than a run-a-ball. His shot-making repertoire, too, is conventional; runs behind the wicket likely coming via glances rather than scoops, boundaries to backward point the product of late cuts and not reverse sweeps.
What an honour it is to be praised by the very man who inspired generations to pick up the bat @sachin_rt
Your words mean a lot to me and to cricket in Afghanistan. Thank you, sir. https://t.co/QHTsrmc8Ob
— Ibrahim Zadran (@IZadran18) February 27, 2025
Dismissals after brief starts do look especially damning. When Kagiso Rabada cleaned him up on Friday off his 29th delivery, Zadran had scored just 17. The two warm-up ODIs against New Zealand and the Pakistan Shaheens side saw him score 32 off 49 and 39 off 55; Afghanistan lost both those games.Early aggression doesn’t necessarily come naturally to him, but with three wickets down in the first nine, it wasn’t what Afghanistan needed, either. The 17 balls following those dual Archer boundaries, Zadran scored just six runs as England reverted to the hard lengths that come to bowlers for whom swing is not a primary weapon. By the halfway mark of the innings, Zadran’s half-century had come up, but it took him 67 balls for his 52; Afghanistan’s 103 in 25 saw them hit just six fours, the lowest for any innings at this Champions Trophy. Against balls pitched on a good length or back of it by that stage, Zadran managed just 7 runs in 23 balls.Having laid anchor for half the innings, Zadran had the confidence to know he could be around to round off the other half. He might argue that the restrained nature of his innings simply boiled down to a refusal to force the issue with false shots. On the handful of occasions the quicks went full in this period, Zadran helped himself to 16 off 12. “I was trying to take time and work on my basics,” he said later. “I always try to keep it simple.”2:01
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It is exactly how Zadran made it look when Jamie Overton returned to the attack and he decided it was time to cash his investment in. Overton began full and was punished by a boundary, and tried to go back to the shorter ball. But, 27 overs in, Zadran began to unleash, kicking into the next phase of his innings with a scythe over long-off. With an injury to Wood reducing his effectiveness, England were forced to turn to Liam Livingstone and Joe Root for a combined 12 overs, and against the belligerence of the incoming Mohammad Nabi and Azmatullah Omarzai, even Adil Rashid’s impact was limited.Threading it all together was Zadran, who nudged his way to three figures off 106 deliveries, and, for someone who it can sometimes feel hides away behind Gurbaz, left England few hiding places. Four days earlier, Ben Duckett appeared to be fading badly towards the end of an epic innings of his own; England did not run a single two between the start of the 41st over till Duckett got out in the 48th, and the big launch at the death never arrived. England scored 42 runs in 38 balls from the start of the final powerplay to Duckett’s dismissal.But Zadran, having played a leading role as innings anchor, was the main character for the big finish, too. A pick-up shot off an Archer slower ball that disappeared to midwicket was perhaps the shot of the game; Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott was still swooning about it four hours later in the press room. Archer kept going full and wide, and Zadran honed in on point; 20 came off the over. Two overs later, against a crowd electrified by the onslaught, he sprinted for four twos in the 47th over, running England ragged. Another 113 came off the final ten overs, and in the end, just about every one of those were required to prevent Zadran’s heroic effort going in vain.Ibrahim Zadran walks back after making a record-breaking 177•ICC/Getty ImagesEngland, in truth, did make it easy for him. Zadran has made no effort to conceal he prefers the classical shots over the modern, and yet England peppered him full, and got peppered right back; 18 full deliveries in the final half of the innings to Zadran yielded 49 runs. It has been accused of being a same-y bowling attack, and Zadran was ensuring it got same-y results.Many players who score big tend to go off the field in the second innings, but Zadran was out there right until the 599th ball of the match, when Rashid launched Omarzai into the Lahore night. Zadran, whose legs never gave up on him, got into position to finish off what he’d started, and finish England off in another ICC ODI tournament.The build-up to this game had focused on whether England should turn up for the match. While Zadran was at his destructive best, there was a sense they didn’t after all.