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Here New Zealand was cruising comfortably at 109/1, and now they are at 113/4. Both the set batsmen are now back in pavilion (Will Young and Rachin Ravindra). And ironically it is the seamer Azmatullah Omarzai who did the maximum damage (at this point 1-0-1-2). Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman have also played their part well, by taking one wicket each.
Looks like another unpredictable match, Afghanistan has one of the best spinners in the world and if New Zealand were chasing then the pressure would have gotten the better, they lost quick wickets but they can recover and set a total around 260 which can be a competitive total considering chasing is difficult in these pitches from the highlights i have seen so far in this tournament.
After the first innings, New Zealand managed to score 288 runs against Afghanistan. A target of 289 runs is not at all a safe target for New Zealand on a wicket like the one played on.
On the kind of wicket played, 300 runs will certainly be a fighting game but since the opponent is Afghanistan, 289 runs is quite a challenging score for the Afghanistan batsmen. Afghanistan team has quality bowlers but lack of quality batsmen due to which they lost most of the matches due to failure of batsmen even though they bowled well. Afghanistan started well against England Afghanistan must start well in the second innings against New Zealand. If they can score 60 to 70 runs without a wicket in the first 10 overs of the power play, Afghanistan will be far ahead in terms of winning this match. Another weakness of Afghanistan if I mention is that if they have a wicket fall then they lose wickets regularly which is a big problem for them.