The captain of Afghanistan, hashmatullah Shahidi, said on Thursday that the calls of other nations for a boycott of his Champions Trophy matches, due to the treatment of women by the ruling Taliban, did not affect their team.
Afghanistan opens its group B campaign in the Champions Trophy against South Africa in Karachi on Friday.
Last month, South Africa Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie supported the demands of British politicians for a boycott of Afghanistan.
The England and Wales Cricket Board resisted the demand to boycott its Champions Trophy Group game, but said they would not be to receive Afghanistan in a bilateral series.
Australia, also in Group B, has canceled an international Twenty20 series and a test against Afghanistan in the last two years, but plans to play its trophies game.
Shahidi said he was imperturbable.
“We only control things within the ground, that is our job,” Shahidi said at a press conference in Karachi. “The other things cannot put us under pressure.”
Afghanistan faces England in Lahore on February 26 and Australia in the same place two days later.
“The whole world knows that we are playing well, especially in the last three years, so we are focused on our game and here we also do control things,” Shahidi said.
Having learned most of his Cricket in the refugee camps in Pakistan during the Soviet invasion of his country in the 1970s, the Afghanistan team has increased by leaps and bounds.
They surprised three former champions, England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in the 2023 World Cup in India. They were the semifinalist losers in the Twenty20 World Cup last year, held in the United States and the Western Indies.
Shahidi said his team was not survived by South Africa.
“We have recently defeated South Africa in Sharjah, so we have that confidence with us and we are not under pressure,” Shahidi said about his team’s 2-1 victory last year.
Afghanistan’s pattern said his team wants to win the trophy. “We are very good, so we are here to win the final and not just to participate. We are definitely [a] 100 percent looking to win this event. “
Afghanistan has quality spinning spins with Rashid Khan, occupied second place in the world in one day international, leading the attack. They also have forceful batters in Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran and Mohammad Nabi.
Shahidi also dissipated statements around the world about the quality of Cricket’s facilities in Afghanistan.
“I heard a lot from other countries that” have no facilities, they don’t have stadiums, they have no academies, “he said.
“It’s totally bad. We have good facilities, Cricket Academies, a high performance center in Kabul and Jalalabad and stadiums in each area of Afghanistan. “
Shahidi regretted that despite the presence of adequate facilities, foreign teams could not play in the country due to long -standing security problems. He expressed the hope that “as soon as possible, one of the countries will come to Afghanistan and will also see the crowd.”
“When we play domestic cryket, it’s completely full,” he added. “Even people wait outside the stadium and try to come and see the national game, as more than 50,000, 40,000 or 30,000 people who come to the end of an event.”
The Afghan pattern said that if a foreign team visited the country, thousands of Cricket fans would see the game in person.
The Champions Trophy, the first global event organized by Pakistan in three decades, opened Wednesday with New Zealand beating the host country for 60 races in Group A. India and Bangladesh are the other two teams of the group. The two best teams in each group will qualify for the semifinals.
