T20 World Cup 2024: Jonathan Trott analyses Afghanistan’s campaign, hopes to learn from semi-final loss

Afghanistan’s memorable campaign in the T20 World Cup 2024 came to an end with a heartbreaking defeat at the hands of South Africa in Trinidad. They defeated Australia in the Super Eights of the competition, which boosted the confidence of the Rashid Khan-led side and after that, they went on to beat Bangladesh to qualify for the semis. Their bowlers until the knockout stage were incredible but the batters had a rough time.

Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran played a pivotal role with the bat to keep Afghanistan alive in the competition. Whenever the openers did well, Afghanistan succeded, otherwise, the result didn’t go in their favour. Something similar happened against South Africa in the semis. Gurbaz and Zadran failed to deliver and eventually, wickets fell like a pack of cards. The Proteas pacers, particularly Marco Jansen dominated with the new ball while Shamsi cleaned up the tailenders to restrict Afghanistan to just 56 runs.

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Afghanistan head coach Jonathan Trott acknowledged the issue and stated that the team management would work to find a solution in the future. He gave credit to the Proteas bowlers but expected the batters to put up a better show in the knockouts. The former England cricketer want more consistency from the batters in the future and that is one area he promised to work on.

“I'm sure the guys hopefully learn from this experience, I think we've obviously got one better than the previous 50-over World Cup in November and it's just about taking it step by step and hopefully we learn from today, the batters certainly. South Africa bowled pretty well and they knew how to bowl the conditions once they saw how the pitch was behaving and I just think it's bad as we haven't fired really, the middle order hasn't fired enough this World Cup,” Trott was quoted as saying by ICC.

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"We've perhaps been a bit too reliant on Gurbaz and Ibrahim to get runs. Nobody else has got runs. And we need to find a reason for that. We need to get more batters in who are going to score runs and be more consistent like the openers have been and given us a chance in games. So that's the project for going forward,” the 43-year-old added.