How can Afghanistan become contenders for the Asia Cup?

Afghanistan can’t wait to get their hands on silverware and establish themselves once and for all as a force to be reckoned with. The 2024 World Cup saw them qualify for the semifinals and defeat Australia for the first time. This Asia Cup will be the perfect opportunity to pull off an upset and finally get their hands on a trophy.

Afghanistan sports an elite spin bowling unit with franchise stars such as Noor Ahmed and Rashid Khan. With mystery spinners galore, the slow, gripping pitches of Dubai should give them enough aid to turn the tournament in their favor. Yet, Afghanistan still need to work on their batting and their aggression to take out teams like Pakistan, Srilanka and India in the Asia Cup,

The strike rate issue

In an era of role players and boundary hitting in T20s, Afghanistan is still trying to play anchors who accumulate in the middle overs and accelerate towards the death. They have a lack of batters who can accelerate freely without it leading to collapses. The Jonathan Trott-led team has its core around anchor batters who can drag the score to a par total.

Afghanistan has a significantly lower batting average and batting strike rate than other Asian test nations. As of late, we have seen batting sides swap out anchors for role players in top sides around the world because success in T20 batting essentially revolves around scoring the most boundaries and losing the fewest wickets in the process.

Batters like Ibrahim Zadran and Azmatullah Omarzai take time to start their innings, set themselves in and start hitting after. There is a lack of batters in the Afghan batting order who can attack bowlers from the get-go and hit as many boundaries as batters from other teams are regularly hitting. Afghanistan’s batters have hit 414 fours and 218 sixes to India’s 776 fours and 472 sixes since 2023. 

Afghanistan needs to devise a strategy where they can consistently score above-par scores so their bowlers have more of a chance to defend their totals more consistently. Rashid Khan’s performance has been through a slight dip over the last IPL, and if Afghanistan wants to be a consistent team, they have to find more ways to win matches than relying on their spinners on every occasion. 

Bowling and fielding

While Afghanistan’s bowling unit is what keeps them competitive in recent years, they have to ensure that more talent keeps coming through the pipeline. Afghan stars such as Mohammed Nabi, Rashid Khan, and Noor Ahmed have travelled the world around franchise leagues and gathered critical cricketing experience that helps them succeed in knockout tournaments.

Yet, for their bowlers to have maximum efficiency, they have to improve their fielding and hold onto tough catches and capitalize on run-out chances. This means that Afghanistan has to step up their professionalism as a cricketing side for holistic improvement in the vein of top international sides such as India or Australia.

Afghanistan’s growth as a cricketing side in recent years has seen many occasions where they managed to pull out ‘upsets.’ They have to improve themselves into a well-rounded side so that they can bring home silverware and finally outgrow the ‘underdog’ tag.

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