WELLINGTON : Afghanistan are aiming for at least one victory over Bangladesh in their maiden World Cup campaign but have not written off hopes of reaching the quarter-finals, skipper Mohammad Nabi said today. The top four sides in each pool qualify for the knockout stages, with co-hosts Australia and New Zealand, Sri Lanka and England all expected to advance out of Afghanistan’s Pool A.
Nabi, however, felt his side could definitely target the Bangladesh match as one to win and then possibly upset one of the big four for an improbable place in the last eight. ‘We will try to best perform very well in the World Cup. Hopefully we go to the second round. Maybe if we win our first game against Bangladesh, maybe hope to go to the second round,’ Nabi said at a pre-World Cup media conference in Adelaide.
Afghanistan have only played 45 full one-day internationals since 2009, eight years after they became an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council. They have had mostly a diet of one-day matches against fellow associates like Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Kenya, though they have played twice against Pakistan and one match each against Australia, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.
Their first victory against a test-playing nation was a 32-run win over Bangladesh last March but they also beat Zimbabwe twice in Bulawayo last July. The team has been together for about three months, participating in camps in UAE, New Zealand and Australia and playing matches against fellow World Cup participants UAE, Ireland and Scotland.
It was the matches against the full test nations in the past, however, and the team’s performances at under-19 World Cups that showed the have the talent to compete at the highest levels.
Nabi, a handy off-spinning all rounder who was born and raised in a refugee camp on the Pakistan border, said the chance to play in the World Cup was very important for his war-torn country.
‘To play in the World Cup is a big opportunity for the cricket and also for the nation,’ he added. ‘If you saw the news, everywhere there’s fighting in the news.
‘If there’s positive news like cricket play Afghanistan in the World Cup, it totally changes the mind back home and also in the world, as well.’
(AGENCIES)
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