This is the latest news about AFG vs SA match today. Hashmatullah Shahidi, the captain of Afghanistan, stated on Thursday that his team was unaffected by calls from other countries to boycott their Champions Trophy matches due to the Taliban’s treatment of women.
Afghanistan will play South Africa in Karachi on Friday to begin their Champions Trophy Group B campaign.
Gayton McKenzie, the South African Sports Minister, supported British politicians’ calls for a boycott of Afghanistan’s playing field last month.
Although they refused to boycott their Champions Trophy group match, the England and Wales Cricket Board declared that they would not host Afghanistan in a bilateral series.
Australia, which is also in Group B, intends to play their trophy game even though they have canceled a Twenty20 international series and a Test match against Afghanistan in the past two years.
Shahidi claimed not to be alarmed.
At a press conference in Karachi, Shahidi stated, “Our job is to control things only inside the ground.” “The other factors cannot exert pressure on us.”
Afghanistan will play England on February 26 in Lahore, followed by Australia two days later. “We are focused on our play, and here we do the control things as well because the entire world knows that we are playing well, especially in the last three years,” Shahidi stated.
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The Afghanistan team has advanced significantly since learning the majority of their cricket skills in Pakistani refugee camps during the Soviet invasion of their nation in the 1970s. They surprised England, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, three reigning champions, at the 2023 World Cup in India. In the Twenty20 World Cup, which was played in the United States and the West Indies last year, they were the losing semi-finalists. According to Shahidi, South Africa did not overwhelm his team.
Regarding his team’s 2-1 victory last year, Shahidi remarked, “We have that confidence with us, and we are not under any pressure because we recently beat South Africa in Sharjah.”
Afghanistan’s captain stated that his team’s goal is to win the trophy. “We are here to win the final, not just to participate, because we are doing really well. Without a doubt, we are [a] fully focused on winning this competition.
Afghanistan has excellent spinners, with Rashid Khan spearheading the attack and ranking second in the world in one-day internationals.
Mohammad Nabi, Ibrahim Zadran, and Rahmanullah Gurbaz are also powerful hitters for them. Additionally, Shahidi refuted international claims regarding the caliber of Afghanistan’s cricket facilities. “I’ve heard a lot from other countries that they don’t have academies, stadiums, or facilities,” he remarked.
It’s completely incorrect. We have good facilities, including stadiums in every part of Afghanistan, cricket academies, and a high-performance center in Kabul and Jalalabad.
Shahidi bemoaned the fact that long-standing security concerns prevented international teams from playing in the nation even though there were sufficient facilities. He said he hoped “one of the countries will come to Afghanistan as soon as possible, and you will see the crowd also.”
“It’s packed when we play domestic cricket,” he continued. “People wait outside the stadium to watch the domestic game; for example, over 50,000, 40,000, or 30,000 people come to watch an event final.” The Afghan captain insisted that thousands of cricket fans would attend the match if a foreign team came to the nation.
New Zealand defeated the host nation by 60 runs in Group A on Wednesday to begin the Champions Trophy, the first international competition hosted by Pakistan in thirty years. The other teams in the group are Bangladesh and India. Each group’s top two teams advance to the semi-finals.
Read Also: Rishad Hossain: Bangladesh’s Key Player in Champions Trophy
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