Afghanistan will start their T20 World Cup campaign on June 4 against the debutants Uganda at the Providence Stadium in Guyana. Ahead of the encounter, captain Rashid Khan exuded immense confidence in the team's ability. Afghanistan performed exceptionally well in the ODI World Cup last year beating teams like England, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and had Australia on the brink before Glenn Maxwell played a special knock.
No wonder, Rashid and his men are being touted to make it to the semifinals this time around by some of the experts. The skipper is delighted to know it but wants his team to focus on the game at the moment and also recalled that they were only one game away from making it to last four at the World Cup last year. "Yeah, a few people have mentioned Afghanistan is going to be there for semis.
"We take that as a very positive sign. Earlier, it used to be hard for us to even qualify. And now to be nominated to be there in the top four, I think it's a big thing for us. But we don't look at those things a lot. It's all about how we're going to be there on the ground, delivering. We were very nearly in the last [ODI] World Cup semis as well.
"We were just one game away from being in the semis and that's where I feel the belief started that nothing is impossible for us as a team. So yeah, we are really excited about this World Cup but as I said before we take one game at a time and then see how it goes," Rashid said on the eve of the opener against Uganda.
However, when it comes to preparation, Afghanistan are not behind as they landed in the Caribbean two weeks before the tournament and held a preparatory camp. Also, many of their players have experience of playing in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and have got an idea of the pitches. Afghanistan will be playing all their group matches in the Caribbean starting from Guyana for the games against Uganda and New Zealand and then move to Trinidad and St Lucia to face Papua New Guinea and the West Indies respectively.
