NEW DELHI: Heartbreak in cricket can linger and recur in fragments long after the game is over. For Afghanistan, the double Super Over defeat to South Africa in Ahmedabad was one such moment. A match that slipped through their fingers more than once and now threatens to derail their T20 World Cup campaign. Captain Rashid Khan admitted on Sunday that the pain is still present but insisted the team must channel the disappointment with renewed determination.
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Afghanistan had opportunities to close out the contest within the regulation 20 overs and again in the first Super Over, only for the match to extend into a second tie where South Africa ultimately prevailed. The narrow defeat came after a five-wicket loss to New Zealand in their first match.
“It’s quite heartbreaking. The last one and a half years we worked very hard… keeping in mind our hopes of going far in the T20 World Cup, but sometimes things don’t go our way. The most important thing is the mentality with which we played and the effort we put in during our first two matches,” Rashid said, acknowledging the emotional toll of the result.
For a team that has been steadily rising in world cricket, the loss felt particularly cruel. However, Rashid believes that the experience, however painful, could serve a greater purpose. “It’s going to help us. It’s not just the next games, but also the next cricket we have. So there are a lot of positives we can take from those two games,” he said.
The lingering pain of near misses is not uncharted territory for Afghanistan. Rashid drew parallels with their agonizing loss to Australia in the 2023 ODI World Cup, when they had reduced the opposition to 91 for 7 before Glenn Maxwell’s double century turned the match around. That memory, Rashid said, stayed with the team until they took revenge in the 2024 T20 World Cup.
“It’s very difficult to lose a match that we have in our hands, like a couple of times, and then it just slips out of your hand. You don’t forget it. Like the match we played against Australia in the 2023 ODI World Cup, you never forget it, until we won against them in the 2024 T20 World Cup,” Rashid said.
Beyond the immediate disappointment, Rashid pointed to a broader challenge facing Afghanistan, and that is the lack of regular exposure against high-level opposition. According to him, the limited bilateral opportunities against leading teams make World Cup matches “disproportionately demanding.”
“As a team, if you don’t get a chance to play against a big team regularly, that’s what happens. If we had played more T20s against South Africa and New Zealand, we would have had an idea of ​​where this team can beat us and where we can do better. You just play against them once a year, and that too in a World Cup event. It is a time and an occasion where you have no option to make a mistake,” he said.
Additionally, scheduling realities often leave teams like Afghanistan with little room for error.
“If you play two matches in four days against New Zealand and South Africa, then your World Cup can end in four. We lost both matches in four days; we are almost out of the World Cup. So, this pressure is different. If you make a small mistake, you are out of the competition,” Rashid said.
He believes greater exposure would help Afghanistan better understand and counter the strategies of elite teams. “If you play with them, you will have an idea. If you don’t play, they will come with a new plan every time… as we saw with New Zealand, they came with an aggressive mentality.”