It was a 1000-yard stare, the sort that could cut through ice. Rashid Khan, a cricketer accustomed to benefiting from effervescent fielding in the Twenty20 leagues that he graces around the world, looked in admonishment at the slapdash fielding that had cost him Eoin Morgan’s wicket.

Dawlat Zadran had contrived to squander a routine chance on the boundary rope. All that was left for Rashid to do was look at the spot and twist his tongue in disbelief.

Rashid’s next ball, dropped too short, was a clean blow over Zadran for six: the first of seven sixes Morgan struck off Rashid in his astounding innings. From the moment of Zadran’s drop, England added another 196 runs in 14.5 overs; Morgan alone hit another 120 of them in his record-breaking assault. For Afghanistan, here was a distillation of how brutal one-day international cricket can be at this rarefied level.

With this year’s World Cup cut to 10 teams, comfortably the smallest of any major sport, Afghanistan have assumed the role of standard-bearers for the excluded emerging nations. Apart from a narrow defeat to Sri Lanka, they must feel like they have been tossed between different schoolyard bullies.

Compared to other sports, cricket has always been unusually stratified in its international structure. The very names used to categorise countries - Full Members and Associate Members - resemble a snooty Victorian club. These distinctions betray how a team’s funding and fixtures have historically been tied to their status, rather than their on-field performance.