Afghanistan record maiden Test win, beat Ireland by 7 wickets
Dehradun: Afghanistan's cricket team Monday recorded its maiden Test win as it beat Ireland by seven wickets in a one-off game here, nine months after making its debut in the traditional format.
Chasing 147 for victory, Afghanistan rode on a 139-run second-wicket partnership between Rahmat Shah and Ihsanullah Janat to secure a historic win months after their Test debut against India.
Both Shah and Ihsanullah struck half centuries, helping their team march to the victory target on the fourth morning of the match in a place that has been its 'home' for a while.
Shah scored a 122-ball 76, and Ct an unbeaten 129-ball 65 as Afghanistan notched up the target within a session.
Afghanistan lost Shah and Mohammad Nabi back-to-back off James Cameron-Dow's bowling before Hashmatullah Shahidi smashed the winning boundary to trigger celebrations in the Afghan dressing room.
Also playing their second Test, Ireland were on the backfoot from the opening day when they were bowled out for 172, even as Afghanistan secured a big first-innings lead after responding with 314.
On the fourth morning, in sight of their maiden Test triumph, Shah hit consecutive fours in just the second over off Tim Murtagh, setting the tone for the innings.
"Happy. It's a historic day for Afghanistan, for our team and our people," said Afghanistan captain Asghar Afghan.
"We have been playing for a while, we have been playing first-class cricket, so we have that composure. The bowlers were very good, Rashid, Yamin. Now we're going to South Africa for World Cup preparation. We will try out best to play good cricket."
Shah was named the Man of the Match for his twin fifties.
"First of all I'd like to congratulate the country for this win. There was a difference in the pitches - the ODI wickets was suitable for spin, this was better for batting. We played session by session and tried to win the match that way. I would like to give credit to the bowlers, they played really well."
By matches, Afghanistan are joint second-fastest to a maiden Test-match win, alongside Pakistan and England.
Ireland skipper William Porterfield said, "It was obviously going to be a tough ask defending 150. It was the first innings where it went wrong for us."
Brief scores:
Afghanistan 314 (Rahmat 98, Asghar 67) and 149 for 3 (Rahmat 76, Ihsanullah 65 not out) beat Ireland 172 (Murtagh 54, Ahmadzai 3-41, Nabi 3-36) and 288 (Balbirnie 82, O'Brien 56, Rashid 5-82, Ahmadzai 3-52) by seven wickets.
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ED team attacked in Delhi during raids in cyber crime case
New Delhi (PTI): An Enforcement Directorate team undertaking searches in a cyber fraud linked money laundering case was allegedly attacked here on Thursday, officials said.
The agency has registered a police FIR about the incident that took place at a farmhouse that was raided by ED officials in the Bijwasan area of the national capital that falls under the Kapashera police station in southwest Delhi.
An Enforcement Officer (EO) suffered minor injuries during the attack. He is continuing with the searches after he was given first aid, officials said.
The probe pertains to a case against the PYYPL app.
The alleged accused in the case, including Ashok Sharma and his brother, allegedly attacked the ED team. The situation is under control and searches are going on, the sources said.
The search operations, according to sources, has been launched after the ED got inputs from the I4C and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) about cyber crimes like phishing, QR code cheating, part time job fraud leading to fraud with many people.
It was found that money earned through this cyber fraud was being layered through as many as 15,000 'mule' accounts and withdrawn using debit and credit cards.
Using these cards, it was found, money was remitted to top up virtual accounts on UAE-based Pyypl payment aggregator and subsequently funds were used from Pyypl to buy crypto currency.
The network was being run by some Chartered Accountants (CAs), the sources claimed.
