West Indies 112 for 3 (Walton 29, Lewis 25) beat Afghanistan 93 (Williams 3-11, Brathwaite 2-26) by 29 runs (D/L Method)
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Chadwick Walton’s cameo at the top gave West Indies the momentum straightway © AFP
West Indies clinched the series with a game to go, brushing Afghanistan aside for the second night in a row. With a combination of Samuel Badree’s discipline and the pace of Jerome Taylor and Kesrick Williams, the hosts struck thrice inside four overs in Afghanistan’s chase of 123, and rarely gave them a sniff later.
The target itself was a revised one, adjusted to amplify West Indies’ 112 for 3 in 15 overs after rain took away nearly two hours from the fixture. Evin Lewis and Marlon Samuels made laboured twenties, after wicketkeeper-batsman Chadwick Walton had powered West Indies to a brisk start. Rashid Khan, Karim Janat and Gulbadin Naib put in strong performances in what would be the second half of West Indies’ innings to pull things back though, and the feeling after the first innings was that Afghanistan had reversed the advantage.
That notion was quickly put to rest. Afghanistan’s chase was a scattered display of anxiety against pace and hare-brained running – perhaps the two were correlated. They slipped to 19 for 3 quickly and the recovery never came. Captain Carlos Brathwaite, who had chipped away at the lower-middle order, took the final catch to notch up a series win.
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Varun Shetty is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo