Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India] : Afghanistan skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi has said that their fielding, especially “dropping catches,” has let them down in the World Cup.
Afghanistan have dropped several catches in their campaign and in their last game Mujeeb Ur Rahman dropped Glenn Maxwell’s catch which eventually cost them a semi-final spot.
During the pre-match press conference ahead of clash with South Africa, Shahidi emphasised the need to improve fielding.
“Yeah, when you lose, you know, it’s a lot of negative things and a lot of things happening in the ground, you have to think about that. In this World Cup, I think one part that we are not good enough in is the fielding. We dropped so many catches. And in New Zealand game also, that dropped catches hurt us.
Especially last game with Australia, that dropped the chances that we had. That was the reason, if we took that, the result and scenario would be far different. But still, everything that is happening in cricket, you have to learn from it. And especially the catches that we missed, now we have to improve on our fielding going forward to take the Afghanistan cricket as a best fielding side.”
He further went on to talk about the impact of the defeat on the players and their efforts to focus on the game that lies ahead of them.
“As I said that it was not easy as a team for all of us. The way it happened with the team, with us, not easy. But still, we are in the World Cup, and we have one important match tomorrow. And as a team, we discussed about it yesterday that we have to now move forward and not think too much about what happened. Because if you think about it, your team’s morale will go down with that.
“As I said we will learn from it and now it’s the part of the history, it’s gone. We have to move forward and think about tomorrow’s game and we will try as a team to come back stronger and win from there,” Shahidi added.
Afghanistan will face South Africa at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Friday.
