Afghanistan cricket team made an important addition to their support staff ahead of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 in form of former India captain Ajay Jadeja. Jadeja has been appointed mentor for Afghanistan for the World Cup in India. Jadeja who played for India from 1992-2000 has become a known face in coaching and commentary after retiring from cricket and Afghanistan will hope to utilise all his experience in the upcoming tournament.
Announcing it on social media, Afghanistan Cricket Board in a statement wrote, "ACB Appointed former Indian Captain and middle-order batter Ajay Jadeja as AfghanAtalan's Mentor for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023."
Jadeja played 15 Tests and 196 ODIs for India scoring 576 and 5359 runs respectively. He has also been part of 111 First-class and 291 List-A games and has scored over 8000 runs in each format with 31 hundreds and 88 fifties combined. Jadeja is a veteran in the sport and someone like him familiar with the Indian conditions, could be very useful for the Afghanistan team, who have been competent in the last few multi-nation events but haven't been more than that.
Afghanistan begin their World Cup campaign against Bangladesh on Saturday, October 7 against Bangladesh in Dharamsala. The Hashmatullah Shahidi-led side was knocked out of Asia Cup from the group stage itself and will be hoping for a better show in the World Cup.
The build-up for the tournament has, however, been far from ideal given the losses in the Asia Cup and their first warm-up game against South Africa getting washed out.
Afghanistan squad for World Cup 2023: Hashmatullah Shahidi (c), Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran, Riaz Hassan, Rahmat Shah, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi, Ikram Alikhil, Azmatullah Omarzai, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb ur Rahman, Noor Ahmad, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Abdul Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq.
