Last year, during the 2023 World Cup, Afghanistan defeated the tycoons of cricket and attracted international attention. Even before these massive victories, we secured our first T20i series win against Pakistan, won the one-day match against Bangladesh at home, defeated Sri Lanka, and won the series against Zimbabwe, Ireland, and the Netherlands respectively.

In this testimonial, I would like to draw the readers’ attention to the multiple core missions of the board, which remained our main focus for around 2.5 years and resulted in great team success in bilateral series (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh- Home and away) and the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024.

Administrative reforms, and bringing financial and technical strength are the three areas that we have focused on. As a result, we have streamlined the administration and developed a well-researched pathway for an extraordinary team. Because of this, the whole cricketing world and fans are in awe of the Afghanistan cricket team and are going gaga over their outstanding play in recent ICC Cricket events.

The immediate plan was to hunt and develop replacements for close-to-retirement players. We relied heavily on slow bowlers. The openers had a problem with mid-range fast bowlers. In 2021, we promoted multiple young talents and allowed them to play against the Netherlands in the ICC Super League. We had performance data, giving them full freedom and a consistent way to express themselves. In the 2022 T20i World Cup match against Australia, the team took it to the very end and lost a really close game by the barest of margins. We learned good lessons from our mistakes and realized for the first time that we could rewrite history books if we didn’t commit certain mistakes, and we proved it.

Earlier, there was a thought that foreign coaches would not come to Afghanistan. Therefore our training camps were held abroad, which would cost more and have fewer benefits because only limited players participated in those training camps. We have built a capacity-building centre to strengthen the national team and domestic cricket players. The High Performance Center (HPC) was built, and in this centre, the players of the national team and domestic cricket who have been performing well throughout are receiving training from domestic and foreign coaches. We have appointed five foreign technical staff, consisting of coaches, physiologists, and trainers, with relevant experience for this task. They are now monitoring the diet, skills, and fitness of the players. The national and A teams have benefited a lot from this centre. Priority has been given to the physical strength and fitness of the players, resulting in profound changes in the national team as well. Also, we have established a Rehabilitation centre where the players are treated properly, and now there is no need to go outside for the treatment of many minor injuries.

Part-I: Overcoming Challenges: Afghanistan Cricket’s Journey of Resilience

There is a big difference between international and domestic cricket. The excellent performers in domestic cricket would not make it to the national team at once. For this purpose, we formed the A team (Afghan Abdaliyan). Some players who are good in domestic cricket play continuously in the A team and after achieving the best results, they come to the national team. Good examples of this are Ishaq Rahimi, Naveed Zadran, and Nangiyal Kharote. They are now part of the national team.

Our effort is to maintain our stability in many areas. For example, we chose Jonathan Trott as the head coach and gave him full freedom and consistency to develop and implement his strategy. We developed and maintained effective relations with captains and supported them throughout the challenges. We encouraged and fostered good and reliable relations among the teams and cricket boards. Decision-making based on analytical data improved, and we avoided displacing players only because of their bad performance in a few games. We knew their strengths and knew how to develop them.