Afghanistan come into the 2024 T20 World Cup on the back of their strongest showing in the ODI World Cup last year. Captain Rashid talks about their prep, key players, and confidence in their methods,
Rashid Khan will lead Afghanistan for the first time in a T20 World Cup, beginning June 1. This will be the fourth World Cup in the format for Rashid and the seventh for Afghanistan, who have never made the knockouts. This time they are paired in a tough group, comprising hosts West Indies, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Uganda.
Afghanistan's players haven't had quite the same impact in ICC tournaments as in T20 franchise leagues around the world. Still, at the 2023 ODI World Cup they beat England, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Netherlands. In an interview during the IPL earlier this year, Rashid spoke about wanting his players to show the belief they put on display at the tournament last year, using the IPL as prep, and playing the Afghanistan way.
The confidence is there because we have already Beating West Indies few times in T20s. We beat them in ODIs as well. And, more importantly, there are seven to eight guys playing in the IPL, which is the best preparation ahead of the World Cup. And the conditions in the World Cup may be good for the spinners - at least, that is my expectation. Even if it is flat wickets, the kind of bowling unit we have, we don't rely much on the wicket. We have a fair few mystery spinners who make it harder for the batter to score freely.
I have also bowled a lot in the CPL. [Mohammad] Nabi, Mujeeb [Ur Rahman] and Noor [Ahmad], too, have bowled on the wickets in the Caribbean and we have all found enough spin and are well-versed with the conditions. So we have that advantage.
But the most important thing is: how we are going there mentally. Do we have that kind of belief where we can beat New Zealand? Do we have that kind of belief where we can beat West Indies? As soon as that belief comes, you can beat any side. That's the kind of belief we had in the ODI World Cup last year in India. Since we beat England, we said we can beat any side.
0 comments:
Post a Comment