Delhi: Afghanistan has made the semi-final battle of the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 more exciting by defeating Australia by 21 runs. The hero of this victory was Gulbadin Naib, who played an important role in his team's victory by taking four wickets and taking a brilliant catch. With this brilliant performance, Gulbadin wrote his name in golden letters in the pages of history.

After losing the toss and batting first, Afghanistan's opening pair gave a great start. Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran scored half-centuries and made a century partnership for the third time in this tournament. However, after this Afghanistan's innings faltered and they could only reach a respectable score. Afghanistan scored 148 runs for the loss of 6 wickets in 20 overs, which proved to be a challenging target for Australia.

The Afghan bowlers did not give any chance to the Australian team to recover while chasing the target. While Naveen Ul Haq gave the initial jolts, Gulbadin Naib completely shook the middle order. Naib put the last nail in Australia's coffin by taking the wicket of Glenn Maxwell who was standing like a wall in the way of victory. Maxwell's catch was taken brilliantly by Noor at point. Gulbadin took 4 wickets for 20 runs in four overs and thus created history.

In fact, Gulbadin Naib has become the first bowler in T20 and ODI World Cup history to take four wickets as the eighth bowler. Afghanistan used eight bowlers in the match against Australia and Naib was their eighth bowler. Naib took the wickets of Marcus Stoinis, Tim David, Glenn Maxwell and Pat Cummins.

The semi-final battle got more exciting

This victory of Afghanistan has made the race for the semi-finals in Group-1 of Super-8 even more exciting. Now both Australia and Afghanistan have two points each. Australia's next match will be against India on June 24, while Afghanistan's match is against Bangladesh. Both the teams will have to win their respective matches to reach the semi-finals, otherwise the game of net run rate will become important.