“Hoping Afghanistan will play the next World Cup”: Naib

The Afghanistan cricket team may have had a winless World Cup, but their spirited performances sure gave a sneak peek into their potential at the international level. As they say goodbye to another eventful chapter of their journey, captain Gulbadin Naib hopes Afghanistan can come back for the next one.

Coming into their second World Cup, a lot of hopes were pinned on Afghanistan to cook up a few surprises. They came close a few times against India and Pakistan but couldn’t win a single league match, finishing at the bottom of the points table. Then, there was the Afghanistan Cricket Board that first called Mohammad Shahzad and later Aftab Alam back home citing different, perplexing reasons.

Afghanistan couldn’t even field a consistent playing XI and their positions in the line-up kept changing. Afghanistan were also sub-par in the field, and the declining fitness levels have been a cause of concern for the skipper who called for better professional standards.

“Fitness is a big issue for our team. So if you’re not fit, nothing will go well on you. We should improve our cricket. We should improve our skills and we should improve every department now of our cricket. We didn’t give 100 percent to what the audience expected from Afghanistan. So I say sorry to my fans, to my country, to my audience,” he said.

Naib admits mistakes have been made, and that his team can only take their lessons from it and move forward.

“We achieved a lot of things in a very short time. So it’s cricket. Sometimes it happens,” Naib said. “The World Cup is not the end of our cricket. I’m hoping Afghanistan will be in the next World Cup. In the coming two, three years Afghanistan should be in the top five, six [teams] insha’Allah we look forward. But have to learn a lot of things. We take positive things from here. We did a lot of mistakes. We should learn from that.”