Afghanistan likes to bat first. Everyone in T20 cricket likes to bat second, except those with Rashid Khan in their team.
Afghanistan takes their Rashid Khan angle further than his other teams, and they make you pay 75% of the game with the fear of what he might do. Holding him back until the tenth over of the second innings like a monster in an old-timey horror film.
But even in this tournament, they started batting second too. And that's because this tournament has been all about bowloing first. If you look at the games between the Test-playing nations in round two, five have been won by the team batting first.
And it's worth looking at the games where teams won batting first. One was a very motivated South Africa playing an England who just needed not to get bowled out for under a hundred.
The Bangladesh West Indies came down to the wire, so that was a coin toss at best. Afghanistan flipped their script when they realised their great plan against teams as good as them or worse wouldn't work against the top sides. But India just made too many runs. England beat Sri Lanka because of a Jos Buttler special, but Sri Lanka held on for a while. And the West Indies lost to Sri Lanka when they put up a good first innings and two West Indies made double figures. If a third had, they might have gotten closer, if not stole the game.
But let's look at some of the wins when batting second. Australia beat South Africa, who collapsed in the middle overs. England beat the West Indies next, who collapsed all the way through for 55. That's the first two games; you can't blame anything other than shit batting for those two. India lost to Pakistan after their top order lost its head. Now dew did play a role later on, but India were already well behind by then.
West Indies lost to South Africa in the Lendl Simmons go slow match. Losing wickets and not making enough runs in that one. New Zealand kept losing regular wickets to Pakistan (or Haris Rauf), and their 134 would never be enough. Bangladesh dribbled to 124 against England, never in the game. Sri Lanka got to 154 against Australia, who were there with 3 overs to spare. Australia made no runs against England. India did the exact same thing against New Zealand. Bangladesh didn't cross 100 against South Africa or Australia as they had already checked out mentally.
In the end, West Indies Australia was a bit of a beer game, but that was mostly made possible by West Indies’ early wickets. Afghanistan lost too many wickets against New Zealand to put up a real score.
So I just went through a bunch of games pretty quick there. And of them, the team batting second won all of them, but how many were because of conditions? I mean, dew might have played a role in some, but in almost every case right there, the team batting first was shit. There is nothing in the UAE conditions that make people score 55, 84, 85 or 110. Even the few 120 scores were usually down to poor batting than anything pitch related. And few of these teams were in the game if/when the dew came in.

So let's look at the kind of games where the second innings advantage can come in. Bangladesh lost to Sri Lanka; this one was the kind of second innings win you see a lot of. Bangladesh got lost in matchups and didn't seem to have done much research on the Sri Lankan middle order. Afghanistan had Pakistan worried, but Asif Ali finished it easy enough. That's the sort of finish to an innings that can be happy in a low chase with wickets in hand.
Sri Lanka should have beaten South Africa, but that was a proper coin flip at the end. But it did go the way of South Africa. If you wanted, you could put the India Pakistan game in here. Still, it was clear on that surface that India lost too many early wickets, got behind in the game, and they had taken no wickets when the dew came in.
If you take out the comically one-sided games, which almost all occurred to teams batting first, it looks more like a 50/50 split. Was it an advantage to bat second, probably. Does that account for 5 out of 23 wins for the team up first, no.
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