Can Afghanistan spinners tame England?

Afghanistan and England will embark upon their T20 World Cup campaign as they lock horns in their opening match, which will also be the second match of the Super 12 in Perth on Saturday.

England are coming into this tournament on the back of some mixed form. They played 21 T20Is this year ahead of this mega event and won only 10 of those while losing as many games. It won't be completely fair to doubt their quality as a team, though, as they have chopped, changed and experimented to find their desired balance ahead of this mega event. 

Their recent performance, however, paints a better picture of their quality and standard of cricket. England have won four of their last five T20Is, with one match yielding no result, against teams like Australia and Pakistan.

They have done that while fielding a full-strength side, sans a few injury concerns, and that's how they are going to play in the World Cup as well. Jos Buttler and his men have plenty of firepower in their batting line-up but they have shown the affinity to collapse against quality spin bowling on a lot of occasions. That's something they need to be careful of while going into this encounter against Mohammad Nabi's men.

The absence of Reece Topley, the top wicket-taker for them in T20Is this year, will dent England's plans and it will be interesting to see which way they go to complete their bowling attack in his absence.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, will look to make a statement this time. They secured an automatic Super 12 spot this time on the back of their seventh-place finish in the last edition and now they will be eager to go one step further to make it to the semi-finals.

But the job is going to be extremely difficult as they are placed in a group consisting of teams like Australia, New Zealand and England. They are yet to beat any of these three sides and might need to exceed their best to pull off a win at least against one of these three teams.

As far as their form ahead of the tournament goes, they won 3-0 against Zimbabwe earlier this year but lost the very next series to Ireland 3-2. They did raise hopes when they finished at the top of their group in the Asia Cup but their form fizzled off later in the tournament.

Afghanistan's performance in the warm-up matches has been inspiring, though. Mohammad Nabi and his men defeated Bangladesh by 62 runs and posted a competitive total of 154/6 against Pakistan before the game got called off. So, the entire group must be in pretty high spirits ahead of their opening match against England.

Predicted Playing XIs

England: Jos Buttler (c & wk), Alex Hales, Ben Stokes, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Moeen Ali, Sam Curran, Chris Woakes, Chris Jordan, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood

Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Hazratullah Zazai, Najibullah Zadran, Ibrahim Zadran Usman Ghani, Mohammad Nabi (c), Fareed Ahmad Malik, Rashid Khan, Naveen-ul-Haq, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fazalhaq Farooqi