AFGHANISTAN stunned South Africa in the opening ODI in Sharjah on Wednesday by defeating them for the very first time in their history.
Having never beaten them in their five previous meetings, Afghanistan came up with a terrific bowling performance to engineer a batting collapse that was reminiscent of their own against the same opponent in the T20 World Cup semi-final recently.

South Africa was humbled in the powerplay and was left reeling at 36/7 after 10 overs before Wiaan Mulder dragged them past 100. While Afghanistan did suffer a few nervy moments in the run chase initially, Gulbadin Naib and Azmatullah Omarzai got the job done to pull off a memorable win. With this result, Afghanistan has now beaten every single full-member side in international cricket except India.

Fazalhaq Farooqi kickstarted the slide by getting rid of Reeza Hendricks very early before knocking off Aiden Markram in his following over. Tony de Zorzi then got a top edge in his attempt to pull Farooqi before young offspinner Allah Ghazanfar stunned the South Africans with a double wicket maiden that saw Tristan Stubbs and debutant Jason Smith depart for five-ball ducks. 29/5 soon became 36/7 and South Africa was in serious trouble of getting bowled out for their lowest ODI score ever before Mulder and Bjorn Fortuin arrested the slide.
The two players managed to put up a brave fight before Rashid Khan opened his column with the wicket of Fortuin. From thereon, it was all Mulder as he struck some lusty blows to bring up his fifty and guide South Africa to a three-figure score.

Chasing 107 wasn’t going to be very straightforward though as Afghanistan realised in the very first over. A thick outside edge saw Rahmanullah Gurbaz find the third man to fall for a three-ball duck and Fortuin then got into the attack to remove Rahmat Shah. Afghanistan was very watchful in their approach with no run rate pressure. However, South Africa kept them on their toes with some disciplined bowling. Fortuin struck again to dismiss Riaz Hassan before Makram trapped Hashmatullah Shahidi leg-before-wicket.

With 47 still needed, the finish could have turned very tricky with one more wicket. However, Omarzai released the pressure with his second six of the innings before Gulbadin took charge. After getting his eye in, Gulbadin smashed successive sixes off Nandre Burger to put Afghanistan on course again

before targeting Andile Phehlukwayo to race to an unbeaten 34 and get the job done on what was a historic evening for his side. (Cricbuzz)