Rain plays spoilsport in the warmup against South Africa

Rain & thunder showers throughout the day spoils the warmup fixture between Afghanistan & South Africa at Thiruvananthapuram. While the entire contingent prayed hard to the weather gods for the rain to stop but the game eventually had to be abandoned without a ball being bowled. The forecast for the next seven days doesn’t look promising either.

Bad weather forecast in Trivandrum could spoil more warmups

The venue is scheduled to host three more warmups which are already looking under threat due to uncanny weather conditions driven by persistent rain. Well, nothing can be done when the nature takes its call. But a careful consideration of all the available options should have been done in advance by the cricket board.

Afghanistan off late has been plagued with injuries

Before the Asia Cup, Azmatullah pulled himself out due to a side strain. Naveen-ul-Haq, who is recuperating from the knee surgery, hasn’t played a single game so far. Rashid Khan didn’t seem to be fully fit during the Asia Cup. Najib Zadran also missed the series against Pakistan due to a niggle. In short, most of the key members of the team have been struggling with fitness all these while.

Every other team is fairly ready with enough matches under the belt

Every participating team of the cricket world cup apart from Netherlands are coming with substantial matches under their belt. On the contrary, after a quick exit from the Asia Cup, ACB decided to focus on players’ rest, fitness & mental health in spite of having the option to play a series of three one day matches against West Indies before coming to India.

Did the board made a mistake by forfeiting the West Indies series before the World Cup?

Now that the first warmup has gone a-begging, Afghanistan would find it really tough to proceed from here with virtually no match practice. Especially it would be a torrid challenge for those who are fairly new to the setup & fringe at international level. Probably ACB should have gone ahead with the WI series with a mix of the world cup squad & the ones chosen in the Asian games. Players who needed rest should have focused on their fitness & mental health. The rest could have played the series to gain the much required international experience before their respective mega events.

Middle order has to stood up for the team to succeed

These days teams are easily scoring & chasing down 300 plus scores. The key reason for setting up huge targets depends primarily on the performance of the middle order. But currently the Afghan middle order is not consistently delivering bigger totals. The recent success of Afghanistan has been driven largely by the openers. Apart from Ibrahim & Gurbaz, none of the other batters have shown ample zeal & steel to carry the batting over their shoulders when both the openers had failed. This is the real concern which the team has failed to address. That is what the series against Windies might have been partially able to resolve.

Afghanistan has to try out all their probable combinations in the remaining warmup

However, no one can turn the needle of the clock behind. Afghanistan now has a solitary practice match scheduled against Sri Lanka on Tuesday. There is a fifty percent rain threat looming over the game which is again a cause of worry. The challenge for the team would be to try all their combinations in that game before plunging into the main event on 7th October at Dharamshala which is again not a good sign for the fringe players.