Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott: ‘We just need one of those tight wins’

Before the Afghanistan team departed for India, the chairman of the country’s cricket board, Mirwais Ashraf, bade farewell – according to Pajhwok, the independent local news agency – by “telling the squad the Afghan nation had pinned high hopes on them and expected they would bring home laurels by showing their skills in the tournament”.

It may be best not to get too carried away. Afghanistan come into the World Cup ranked ninth in the world, above only the Netherlands of the competing nations, have lost nine of their 13 completed one-day internationals over the past year (the fifth-worst record of the 22 teams that have played the format), and have one win in two previous appearances in the tournament – by one wicket, with three balls to spare, against Scotland in 2015. In last month’s Asia Cup they were dumped out in the group stage, winless and pointless. Things can only get better.

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Yet, perhaps, they are about to. For Jonathan Trott, their head coach, the Asia Cup – a tale of tight margins and statistical miscalculations, of which more later – was “quite a watershed moment, in seeing what we can actually achieve when we put our mind to it, and put away the fear of failure”. This team might just be on the verge of a breakthrough.

“We just need to get one of those tight wins,” Trott, the former England batter, says. “Afghanistan is known for T20, but these guys can play 50-over cricket as well. They just need to know that, to believe in themselves, to be able to get over the hurdle. Lots of times we’ve been so close. We just need to get better at closing out games, because these guys can play cricket.”

There is certainly talent there: Trott’s squad includes a spin attack of Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Rashid Khan, the world’s third- and fourth-ranked ODI bowlers, and Mohammad Nabi, the No 2 all‑rounder. The key seamers Azmatullah Omarzai and Naveen‑ul-Haq both return after missing the Asia Cup. “The aim is to beat the teams we expect to beat and then create a few upsets as well,” Trott says. “But it all starts with that first game against Bangladesh. With these guys, a lot of self-belief and they’d be quite unstoppable.”

Afghanistan’s players have certainly had to deal with more adversity, both sporting and societal, than the average cricketer, more so since the country reverted to Taliban rule in 2021. This year the team’s captain, Hashmatullah Shahidi, and their best-known player, Khan, responded angrily on social media when Australia cancelled a bilateral series because of the erosion of women’s rights, and an outright ban on women’s sport, in Afghanistan. While members of the men’s team are greeted as heroes when they return to the country, the women’s team are in exile.

The experience of the players Trott works with is hardly comparable, but they endure their own kind of exile. Afghanistan never play at home and, more than 14 months after his appointment, Trott has still never been to the country whose team he coaches. His challenge has been to “adjust and acclimatise to the culture I’m in”, even though he has never actually been in it. His is a world of tours and United Arab Emirates training camps, and of contracts that last only as long as World Cup cycles – his latest runs until the end of the year.

“You get judged a lot on World Cups, it’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind and very important with regards to players’ futures and coaches’ futures,” he says. “But with this job, to gauge solely on results isn’t the way you should probably do it. If you’re an established Test playing nation, results are everything. I think with this it’s how you’re setting the guys up for the next coach, or the coach after that. It’s the generations of players. Because these guys, there’s so many challenges. Improving the psyche of the players, or the resilience of the players, it’s immeasurable. You can’t see that in wins and losses. I certainly don’t like losing, but I always need to be careful that I don’t judge progress made just on wins and losses.”

Trott’s struggles with the stress of playing are well known, but after stints as England’s batting coach and consulting with Scotland he is thriving under a different kind of spotlight. “I enjoy the pressure of making decisions,” he says. “I think sometimes if you’re just a specialist coach, a batting coach or a bowling coach, you sort of get pigeonholed a little bit. I think it’s nice to oversee things. You’ve got to have the right coaches underneath you – that’s the skill of the head coach, to get players to trust you, getting other coaches to trust you, to get the best out of them as you get to know them, I suppose. Who knows what’s in store? I’d like to be a head coach and we’ll see where the future goes. This game changes very quickly, like anything, like life.”

Afghanistan arrived in India still smarting from a remarkable, gut-punch of a conclusion to their Asia Cup campaign. In their final group game they could have overhauled Sri Lanka, the eventual finalists, on net run-rate had they chased their target of 292 in 37.1 overs, and with one of those deliveries remaining they had 289. Mujeeb heaved to the fielder at long-on and that was it, they were out.

Except they weren’t: these calculations don’t factor in the possibility of a team scoring more than their target, and on this occasion a four off the next ball would also have done it; or for that matter a six off any of the following three. There was still time for Fazalhaq Farooqi, their No 11, to run a single and get Khan, an immeasurably better batter, on strike. Afghanistan just didn’t know.

“Every game you get a Duckworth-Lewis printout of what you need per ball and all that sort of stuff,” Trott says. “Everything was communicated with us. We spoke to the match officials and they said: ‘No, it was only ever 37.1 [overs].’ That’s what was communicated to us by the technical committee of the ACC [Asian Cricket Council] and the match referee. Rash [Khan] actually asked the umpire at the non-striker’s end and he got on the walkie-talkie and said 37.1. So that’s a lesson learned. I spoke to [Sri Lanka’s coach] Chris Silverwood afterwards – he didn’t know. I’ve spoken to a lot of head coaches about it and all of them have gone: ‘I had no idea about that.’ I mean, every single one. No one knew.

“Everyone will be aware now going forward. Like when South Africa got knocked out of the World Cup in 2003 because they got the Duckworth-Lewis [wrong] – now everyone knows whatever you see you’ve got to be ahead of it.”

It was a freak moment, and for Trott even more painful because there was no one else to blame. “I’m gutted about it,” he says. “As a head coach the responsibility stays with you. You’re in charge, you’re the guy where the buck stops. So that’s hard to take.” Fortunately it doesn’t seem to have put him off.