AFG vs IRE

It has been a memorable evening for us and cricket fans around the globe. I, Darpan Tikiya, and my colleague Bidipto have enjoyed bringing you the ball by ball action. Time for us to bid you goodbye. Take care and keep following Sportskeeda for sporting action around the world. 

Andy Balbirnie (Ireland Captain): I can't quite believe it. I think we started off well having lost the toss. To take 20 wickets in a Test is pretty special. This is the first time we have done it. It did swing a bit more than we expected. In the chase, we knew we were only one partnership away. There's always a bit of nerves when you're chasing your first win. There is a lot of talk about relevance of Test cricket around the world. But if you ask this group, this is a big moment for us. This is right up there in our achievements. Hopefully it will inspire more kids back home who want to take up Test cricket. There's a lot cricket going on in the world. We know we won't get 10-15 Tests a year. But whatever we get we'd try to make the most of it now that we've got the monkey off our backs.

Hashmatullah Shahidi (Afghanistan captain): I think the first day was the problem. We let ourselves down as a batting unit. We threw our wickets away, even though the Irish seamers bowled well in good bowling conditions. We had some positives. Rahmanullah Gurbaz played positively, Naveed Zadran was impressive and Zia Ur Rehman Akbar got a fifer on debut, so they put their hand up. A first win is really special and we congratulate Ireland on this victory. We hope to take our learnings from this game only to get better in this format. 

Mark Adair has been adjudged the Player of the Match! Here is what he has to say.

Mark Adair: The way the lads put up the fight and the way we played this game, make it special to get the win! I'm really happy for the way I have bowled in this game. Test cricket is very difficult, we have been on the losing side so many times but this is relieving. We've put in some important runs, we've hit the right lengths as a bowling unit and the way the lads finished it off was brilliant. We hope to get more games in and win most of them. 

Ireland win by 6 wickets.

Lorcan Tucker 46 & 27* | Mark Adair 5/39 & 3/56
Hashmatullah Shahidi 20 & 55 | Zia ur Rehman Akbar 5/64 & 1/33

In the first ever Test that the Tolerance Oval has hosted, it has witnessed history being made. Ireland have registered their first ever Test victory in men's cricket.

It was all set up brilliantly by Mark Adair who rocked the Afghanistan top order with some wonderful seam bowling on Day 1. Though Afghanistan did come back riding on inspiring performances from Naveed Zadran and Zia ur Rehman Akbar, Ireland had got themselves a handy first innings lead of 108.

In the end, that turned out to be crucial. Ireland were 39/4 chasing 111 in the fourth innings. A few more and they could have seemed like a mountaineer running out of breath at the base camp of Everest. But it was the captain who lead the way.

Andy Balbirnie became the first Ireland cricketer to score a 4th innings fifty. An innings that would be etched in history of Irish cricket with golden letters as he guided them past the finishing line. Don't forget the contribution of Lorcan Tucker who proved to be the perfect support act. 

And with that, we now have 12 Test teams, each of whom have won a Test match at least.  

31.3 Naveed Zadran to Lorcan Tucker, THERE IS THE HISTORIC FIRST FOR IRELAND! THEY WIN THEIR FIRST EVER TEST MATCH! Good length ball around off-stump. Tucker got outside the line of the stumps and tried to tap it to mid-on. He missed it but the ball took the inside edge and rapped him on the pads to roll down to gully, handing the batters the chance to run through for a single, and they did not hesitate one bit! Both completed the run and leapt in joy to give many an Irish fan a lot to cheer about! 

The fielder in the deep has pulled this in inches from the ropes. Irish fans in the crowd thought they had it. They'll have to wait a little more.

31.2 Naveed Zadran to Andy Balbirnie, short and wide outside off-stump. Cut away to deep cover point off the back foot for three runs. The scores are level. 

30.5 Zia Ur Rehman Akbar to Andy Balbirnie, full and slow on off-stump. A hard, conventional sweep down to deep square-leg for a single again. 

30.4 Zia Ur Rehman Akbar to Andy Balbirnie, good length ball on off-stump. Defended back to the bowler off the back foot as it turns away. No run.