Sport
Afghanistan to send over 100 athletes to Asian Games 2023

The Asian Games 2023 is finally happening with the opening ceremony scheduled to take place on September 23 in Hangzhou, China.
The games will run through to October 8 and will include a total of 40 sports across 61 disciplines at 56 venues.
The games were originally scheduled to take place last year but were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports of Afghanistan announced on Tuesday that the country’s athletes in athletics, boxing, Kurash, weightlifting and wrestling left Kabul on Tuesday for China.
It is believed other athletes will depart Kabul on Wednesday for the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Host-nation China will start the games as the most successful nation, having won 3,187 medals in the history of the Asian Games, which includes 1,473 gold medals.
Meanwhile, the Asian Games Village for Hangzhou 2023 was officially opened on Saturday as teams started arriving.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that 17 Afghan female athletes, who are living in exile, including a women’s volleyball team, will participate. However, the Islamic Emirate rejected the reports at the time, and said that all athletes from Afghanistan being sent to Hangzhou are male.
The IEA has imposed strict restrictions on women and girls over the past two years, including a ban on females taking part in sport.
In a recent statement issued by Afghanistan’s General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports, 17 sports teams, including wushu, soccer, volleyball and cricket, will participate in the Hangzhou Asian Games.
Afghanistan has been invited to send a total of 17 teams, comprising 103 athletes and 23 coaches, to Hangzhou.
In an exciting turn of events, cricket will return to the upcoming Asian Games, eight years after its last inclusion in 2014 in Incheon, South Korea. The tournament will include 14 men’s teams, including a team from Afghanistan.
Scheduled to be played in the T20 format, the men’s event will be played between September 27 and October 8. Zhejiang University of Technology Pingfeng Cricket Field is the host stadium for all the matches.
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh have already reached the quarter-finals based on their ICC T20I Rankings as of June 1, 2023, while Afghanistan, an ICC Full Member, will participate only in the men’s event. A win against Mongolia will seal a top-eight spot for the squad.
After cricket’s inception in the 2010 edition in Guangzhou, China, the sport was played in the 2014 continental event in Incheon, South Korea. The 2018 games in Jakarta, Indonesia, the previous edition of the Asian Games, did not feature cricket.
At Incheon, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh won medals in the men’s event.
The cricket teams participating at the Asian Games 2023 are India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Mongolia, Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Maldives, Hong Kong, Thailand, Bahrain.
Sadly, Afghanistan’s football team has withdrawn from the games due to a funding crisis.
According to the latest figures produced by HAGOC, the number of athletes expected is 12,417 – over 1,000 more than the previous record of 11,300 at the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia in 2018.
Sport
Patel and Mendis help Sunrisers beat Kings in Dhoni’s 400th T20
Fast bowler Harshal Patel grabbed four wickets and Kamindu Mendis showed his allround skill as Sunrisers Hyderabad upstaged Chennai Super Kings by five wickets in Chennai on Friday.

Patel grabbed 4-28 and was ably assisted by skipper Pat Cummins and Jaydev Unadkat — both finishing with identical figures of 2-21 — to dismiss the home team for a below-par 154 in 19.5 overs.
South African youngster Dewald Brevis was the top scorer for the Kings with a blistering 25-ball 42, cracking four sixes and a boundary on his debut for the franchise.
Skipper M.S. Dhoni failed to make his 400th T20 a memorable occasion, managing just six runs and coming out on the losing side.
Sunrisers achieved the target in 18.4 overs for the loss of five wickets with Ishan Kishan leading the way with a solid 34-ball 44 with five boundaries and a six.
Mendis struck an unbeaten 32 off 22 balls, adding 49 in an unbroken sixth wicket stand with Nitish Kumar Reddy who finished with a 13-ball 19 not out.
The victory lifted Sunrisers to eighth on the 10-team table topped by Gujrat Titans with 12 points in eight matches while five-time champions Kings are at the bottom with four points in nine.
Patel, declared man-of-the-match, attributed discipline as the key for his fine bowling.
“I figured out pretty early that hitting it on a good length around the stumps was important because it was hard to hit with the horizontal bat,” said Patel.
Dhoni blamed losing a cluster of wickets for the poor batting show.
“I think we kept losing wickets and another thing is in the first innings the wicket was slightly better,” said Dhoni. “A total of 157 wasn’t a justifiable score.”
Earlier, Chennai Super Kings were rocked by Sunrisers’s pacer Patel who ripped through the middle and lower-order batting.
The home team started on a wrong note when opener Shaik Rasheed was caught in the slip off the very first delivery of the match by fast bowler Mohammad Shami.
Seventee-year-old Ayush Mhatre was impressive in his 19-ball 30, which was studded with six boundaries, while Ravindra Jadeja managed 21 with a six and a boundary.
Jadeja’s dismissal brought Dhoni to the crease as the crowd roared to welcome their hero in his 400th T20 match but Dhoni’s stay lasted for just ten balls.
It was Brevis who assured Kings get past 150 with some lusty hitting.
Deepak Hooda also chipped in with a 21-ball 22 with a six and a boundary.
Sport
Sri Lanka A defeats Afghanistan A by 4 wickets in Abu Dhabi

Afghanistan A was defeated by Sri Lanka A with a margin of four wickets in the ongoing 50-over tri-nation cricket series.
The match was held on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Afghanistan had previously lost one match against Ireland and another against Sri Lanka in this series.
Batting first, the Afghan team set a target of 229 runs after losing eight wickets.
In response, Sri Lanka A chased down the target, losing six wickets.
Sport
Afghanistan qualify for U19 Cricket World Cup 2026

Afghanistan’s U19 cricket team has officially qualified for the ICC Men’s U19 Cricket World Cup 2026, following the final day washout in the Asia Qualifiers.
After securing three big wins in their first three games, today’s match against Nepal U19s was washed out. Thanks to their superior Net Run Rate, Afghanistan U19s topped the table and book their berth in the ICC Men’s U19 Cricket World Cup 2026, which will take place early next year in Namibia and Zimbabwe.
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