Michael Vaughan, a former England captain, has expressed fears about the scheduling of games leading to Afghanistan’s loss in their semi-final match at the T20 World Cup against South Africa. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the former England captain blamed Afghanistan’s semi-final defeat to South Africa on biased scheduling of T20 World Cup that favored India.
During the powerplay and spin overs Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen and Tabraiz Shamsi among others bowled very well thereby dismissing the Afghan cricket team with only 56 runs on Wednesday in their first semi-final.
Afghanistan experienced disappointment in their first ever World Cup semifinal as they lost it, while South Africa broke a series of WC semifinals attempts by advancing through India or England, they won’t go back empty handed at least.
Vaughan also spoke about a range of logistical challenges that Afghani faced before this match including a huge flight delay to Trinidad that made it impossible for them prepare properly at a new ground.
“Last Monday night in St Vincent saw Afghanistan qualify for the WC semis…4 hrs delayed flight on Tues to Trinidad resulted in nor practice or acclimatization time on a new venue…total disrespect for players sorry,” Vaughan said using his ‘X’ account.
Also he called out the unfairnesses regarding timing of semi final matches which appeared aimed at Indian viewership timings implying that other participating nations may have been unfairly dealt with.
Another post reads “Surely this semi should have been the Guyana one.. but because the whole event is geared towards India it’s so unfair on others. #T20IWorldCup.”
In this T20 World cup; he criticized India’s schedule saying “They haven’t played one game in evening at WC.”
The current ICC T20 World Cup has set up an eagerly awaited rematch between India and England on Thursday after former unexpectedly lost by a huge margin to the latter in the 2022 T20 WC semi-final. England subsequently won that game by a large margin and since then, India has changed its strategy of approaching T20 cricket.
