You can’t blame Afghanistan for their quiet optimism as they get ready for this year’s T20 World Cup. They had that luxury because of the circumstances that transpired at the 50-over World Cup in India a few months prior, where they won four of their nine league games and narrowly missed making the final four.
After overseeing a strong display, Jonathan Trott, whose contract was extended as head coach until the T20 World Cup in June, has good cause to think his team can “beat anybody” again. He memorably expressed the same belief the night before their historic victory over England in New Delhi last year.
But Afghanistan needs to make apologies if that prophecy is to come true once more. They have to establish batting consistency going into the Bengaluru match as they are trailing 0-2 and have already scored 158/5 (in Mohali) and 172 (in Indore).
“All of that [batting longer and with a higher strike rate] is combined in it.” Going into the final ten [overs], I believe we need our in hitters. On January 16 (Tuesday), Trott stated, “We have seen how difficult it is to stop in batters in the last five overs.”
We performed admirably at Mohali, scoring 110 runs in the final 10 overs. Honestly, you couldn’t ask for more for just two wickets. However, in Indore, we bowled at six an over during the middle nine overs, following the Power-Play’s build-up to the final four or five overs. Once more, it’s those situations where we do great in one game but poorly in another. If you want to compete for a World Cup or a series, we need to put in more effort. Thus, that presents a challenge as well as the thrilling part—that is, if we do those things correctly, we can defeat anyone,” he continued.
Afghanistan won the UAE series 2-1 before traveling to India, where the aforementioned inconsistency resurfaced. Two days later, they lost the chase of 167 after easily winning the opening match by 72 runs with a total of 200. They huffed and buffered their way to the series victory, but eventually they did. Trott has his sights set on replicating the kind of excellent build-up Afghanistan received with the Asia Cup and three bilateral series (against Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan) in 2023 for the ODI World Cup. There are one game still in Bengaluru, three in Sri Lanka, and three against Ireland in Sharjah.
We haven’t engaged in any T20 cricket action lately. We take a little bit as a side to get into a groove. With the Asia Cup and the series that preceded it, we witnessed our own preparation for the 50-over World Cup. That’s what I’m trying to accomplish here.
We seem to be improving in several areas, in my opinion. Hopefully we can work things out tomorrow, which is Wednesday. We as a team are completely aware of our batting statistics against the greatest players in the world. We’re not too bad in the bowling department either. We always want to get better at bowling, but if we want to become that more formidable team that plays every day, we need to always improve in a few areas when it comes to batting as well,” Trott stated.