Image Credit- Getty
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.
“It’s a combination of all of that [batting long
and batting with a better strike rate]. I think we need our in batters going
into the last 10 [overs]. We have seen how hard it is to stop in batters in the
last five overs,” Trott said on January 16 (Tuesday).
“We did well in Mohali, in the last 10 overs to
get 110 runs, I think for just two wickets, you can’t ask for anything more.
But in Indore, in the middle nine overs, we went at six an over after the
PowerPlay building up to the last 4-5 overs. So again it is those areas, where
we do well in one game and then we don’t do well in the next. We need to do it
more if you want to compete over a series or a World Cup. So that’s the
challenge but also the exciting bit that if we get those things right we can
beat anybody,” he added.
Afghanistan won the UAE series 2-1 before travelling
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 puffered 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 played a lot of T20 cricket recently.
As a side we sort of take a while to get going with rhythm. We saw ourselves
build up towards the 50-over World Cup with the Asia Cup and the series before
that. That’s what I am looking to build up here.
“I think we’re sort of getting better in parts.
Hopefully tomorrow [Wednesday] we can get it together. As a side we are fully
aware of our stats against the world’s best in batting. In the bowling
[department], we are pretty good. We always want to improve on our bowling but
with batting there are a few areas to improve consistently, if we want to
become that tougher side that competes day in and day out,” Trott said.