AGENCY
NEW DELHI, Feb 20
Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi is confident of beating South Africa on their Champions Trophy debut in Karachi on February 21, especially after having defeated them 2-1 in the ODI series in Sharjah last year.
It was also Afghanistan’s first ODI series win against a top-five ranked nation.
“Between 2019 and now there’s too much difference and just recently we beat them [South Africa] in Sharjah – 2-1 – so we have that confidence with us and we are not under pressure anyway,” Shahidi said at his press conference on Thursday.
“Because right now we are focusing what we can do in this tournament and I believe that our team is more ready for this tournament and we are focusing on our own team. There is no pressure on us.”
While Afghanistan will be without teenaged mystery spinner AM Ghazanfar, who has been sidelined from the entire tournament with injury, they have enough spin depth in the form of Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmad, Mohammad Nabi and Nangeylia Kharote. Afghanistan will also have support from the Karachi crowd. “First of all, about people here – there are a lot of Afghans,” Shahidi said. “They live here in Karachi and in Pakistan and also a lot of Pashtun people, I think, they support us.
So yeah, yesterday there was a lot of crowds shouting for us [during training] and it feels good and it give us confidence that we have supporters here and about our performance.” This will be Afghanistan’s first-ever appearance in the Champions Trophy, but Shahidi made it clear that they are not here to make up the numbers and that their goal is to win the title.
Afghanistan can draw confidence from their performances in the recent global tournaments: in the 2024 T20 World Cup, they made the semi-finals while earlier in the 2023 ODI World Cup, they had booked a sixth-place finish and with that a spot in this Champions Trophy.
“We are doing very good and, in this tournament, we are here to compete here and our aim is to win the final,” Shahidi said. “We are not here just to participate here in this tournament. We are definitely 100% looking to win this event and at the same time because we played a lot of quality cricket from last two years and it’s a good chance for us because the boys are very experienced and these conditions are also suitable for us. So we have a good chance and let’s start it from tomorrow and hopefully we start with the win and we go with the same momentum throughout the tournament.”
Afghanistan haven’t had a dedicated home venue and since June 2017, when they were granted Full-Member status, they have played their home internationals in the three major cities of the UAE, in Dehradun, Lucknow and Greater Noida in India (which was also home before they became a Full Member). Shahidi, though, talked up the cricketing facilities and domestic cricket in Afghanistan, hoping to play international cricket in country in the near future.
“I have answered this in Pashto but let me say it again because in media I heard a lot from other countries that they [Afghanistan] don’t have facilities, they don’t have stadiums, they don’t have academies. It’s totally wrong,” Shahidi said. “We have good facilities. We have cricket academies. We have High Performance Centre in Kabul and Jalalabad and also, we have stadiums in every zone of Afghanistan. So, we have the facilities to call a team to come to Afghanistan but in our country there were some security issues that’s why other countries are not coming but hopefully soon, as soon as possible, one of the countries will come to Afghanistan and you will see the crowd also.
“When we play domestic cricket, it’s fully packed. Even people wait outside the stadium and try to come and watch the domestic game, like more than 50,000, 40,000 or 30,000 people coming for the finals of an event. I know that if any team come to Afghanistan, there will be like thousands of people, fans come and arrive to the stadium because there is a lot of craze for cricket. There are a lot of people who love cricket. So hopefully that day comes and hopefully it comes soon.”
