Over the course of one tour of Zimbabwe and a return series on neutral ground, Afghanistan have notched up a number of firsts: ODI and T20 series wins over a Test-playing opponent, and now a place in the top ten of the ODI ranking list. At the start of the T20 series, they will be full of confidence. After all, they already sit ninth in the T20 rankings, a whole five places above Zimbabwe.During their tour of Zimbabwe, Afghanistan made a number of changes between the ODI and T20 series, bringing in specialists such as Usman Ghani and Gulbadin Naib. This time around they included Naib in their eleven for the final ODI - with spectacular results - and might make more changes still for the first T20I, with plenty of options in their 21-player squad.
Though they eventually lost the ODI series, Zimbabwe did impressively to draw level from 2-0 down. The inclusion of Neville Madziva gave their seam attack some thrust with the new ball, while their senior players - particularly Hamilton Masakadza and Graeme Cremer - stepped up with some excellent performances at crunch times. Despite Zimbabwe's poor T20 record overall, and though Afghanistan enjoy this format more than any other, this series should be as competitive as the ODIs were.
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