India has already reached the semi-finals of the tournament by winning all eight matches. So the second team in the semi-finals is from South Africa. Now only one team has a chance to make it to the last four. Currently three teams are in the race for this, New Zealand, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
However, New Zealand, which won its last league match against Sri Lanka in just 23.2 overs last night, has a net run rate of 0.743 and is far ahead of the other two teams Pakistan and Afghanistan in this race.
Today i.e. on Friday, Afghanistan has to play its last league match against South Africa in Ahmedabad. Afghanistan's net run rate is in minus. He is at sixth position in the points table with a net run rate of -0.338. Pakistan is also at fifth position with same number of points and run rate of 0.036.
In the match with New Zealand, Sri Lanka batted first but its batsmen kept getting out at frequent intervals. However, Dilshan Madushanka and Mahish Teekshana added 43 runs for the 10th wicket and made the record of the biggest partnership for the last wicket for Sri Lanka.
Despite this, the Sri Lankan team was out after scoring only 171 runs. In response, the New Zealand team started batting aggressively and easily won the match by five wickets. The future of four teams depended on this New Zealand-Sri Lanka match.
By winning this match by a big margin, New Zealand wanted to greatly strengthen its chances of reaching the semi-finals. With this victory achieved with 160 balls remaining, New Zealand's net run rate has increased to 0.74 and it has gone far ahead of the other two teams Pakistan and Afghanistan in the race for the semi-finals.
After this defeat, the Sri Lankan team slipped to ninth place in the points table of the tournament. This has made Sri Lanka's chances of playing in the Champions Trophy 2025 difficult. The Champions Trophy 2025 is to be held in Pakistan and only eight teams including the organizers can participate in it.
New Zealand's big win over Sri Lanka means that Pakistan and Afghanistan will have to overcome a very difficult equation to reach the semi-finals. That means both the teams will not only have to win but it should be by such a big margin that the net run rate can be better than New Zealand. Pakistan has to play the last league match against England. So first of all Pakistan will have to win this match at any cost.
But a normal win will not allow Pakistan to reach the semi-finals as it has to leave New Zealand behind in net run rate. So currently the equation is that if England scores 300 runs while playing first, then Pakistan will have to achieve this target in only 6.1 overs. That means, even if Pakistani batsmen score six runs on every ball, they will still be able to score only 222 runs in that many overs.
Even if Pakistan bowls out England for just 100 runs, it will have to achieve the target in just 2.5 overs. Whereas if Pakistan scores 300 runs while batting first, then it will have to bowl out the England team for just 13 runs. That means, to reach the semi-finals, Pakistan will have to defeat England by a huge margin of 287 runs.
After the match with New Zealand, turbanator Harbhajan Singh said, Pakistan now has no chance of reaching the semi-finals because they will have to win the match by 287 runs. They may not even score that many runs.
He said, In such a situation, if they want to win the match by 287 runs, then Pakistan will have to score more than 450 runs. Pakistan will have to go back and the New Zealand team will play against India in the first semi-final of the World Cup 2023.
At the same time, Afghanistan's net run rate is in minus, so there is an even bigger target in front of them. Afghanistan will have to win today's match against South Africa by an almost impossible margin of 438 runs so that its net run rate can be better than New Zealand.
Along with this, it will also have to hope that Pakistan either does not win or does not achieve the big margin by which it had to win. Now only three league matches are left for World Cup 2023. Today i.e. on 10th November there is a match between Afghanistan and South Africa.
Pakistan and Australia teams will play each other on Saturday. There will be a match between the teams of India and Netherlands on Sunday.
Also Read: India vs New Zealand once again in ICC knockout
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