Afghanistan assistant coach Raees Ahmadzai wants Afghanistan to play the top full-member teams more often to help them improve on quality and the ability to handle pressure.
The Afghans had quite an eventful and mixed Asia Cup 2022 campaign, with them showing sparks of brilliance consistently, but the inability to seize key moments clearly came to the fore.
They registered convincing wins over Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the first round before challening the former and Pakistan in the Super Four round but finished second in both occasions.
Their bowling stood tall while defending a modest 129/6 against Pakistan, with left-arm quicks Fazalhaq Farooqi and Fareed Ahmad as well as the experienced Rashid Khan combining to reduce the opponents from 87/3 to 118/9 by the 19th over. However, Naseem Shah tonked consecutive sixes off Farooqi in the 20th over in a heartbreaking finish.
Afghanistan have challenged the top teams in multi-nation tournaments like the Asia Cup 2018, World Cup 2019 and the T20 World Cup 2021 last year, and they need more opportunities in bilaterals to improve further, feels assistant coach Ahmadzai.
“It’s important for a team like us to play against top-level teams. It’s not easy. I can’t remember when we last played India or Pakistan. Playing one or two matches against them in top-level tournaments is not enough. It will help if we play them more often.
“Only then can our players learn to control their emotions, control pressure and learn from [the experience]. I feel we deserve that.
“To be honest, everyone panicked in that situation [when Pakistan were nine down],”
he said.
Ahmadzai was pleased with the team’s overall campaign, and identified key learnings ahead of the T20 World Cup in Australia beginning next month.
“I think we did very well, especially our young boys. We learnt a lot from our first two wins. Then the way we defended 130 against Pakistan was a good learning process for our players ahead of the World Cup,”
he added.
