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Ahead of the clash against home favourites India, Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi has said they cannot expect their spinners to save the team from trouble all the time.
Afghanistan will face India in their second group-stage match of the ICC World Cup encounter on Wednesday at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. Afghanistan will be looking for their first points in the tournament after suffering a defeat against Bangladesh in their opening match of the World Cup. India started their campaign with a 6-wicket triumph against Australia. In their first WC encounter, Afghanistan batters failed to deliver as they were bowled out for just 156 runs in Dharamsala. The captain said the batters needed to overcome the pressure and post a strong score for the bowlers to defend. "I made a statement at the beginning that we will play good cricket as a batting side. We have a good spin bowling attack, but only one department can't win you games. You have to score runs for that, to win the game," Shahidi said during a pre-match press conference. "As a team, we have that belief that we can come back in the next game and throughout the tournament, so the belief is there and the talent is there and we will try to move on and make it better and improve in tomorrow's game," he added. Former Indian player Ajay Jadeja is serving as the mentor for the Afghanistan team in the ICC World Cup. Shahidi said Jadeja always talks about how to handle pressure well and deal with teams. "It's good because he has a lot of experience of international cricket and experience of the same conditions, Indian conditions also. So as a mentor, he always talks about how to deal with pressure, how to play against these teams. It's not about too much technique, because he just came to the team and he can't work with the techniques of batting, bowling stuff. He just tries to give us talks about mental (strength) and how to deal with this kind of team. Yeah, so it's working well," Shahidi added. Afghanistan Squad: Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi(c), Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi, Azmatullah Omarzai, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Ikram Alikhil, Abdul Rahman, Riaz Hassan and Noor Ahmad. (ANI)
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