The head coach of Afghanistan, Jonathan Trott, is regretful as his team faced defeat in Mumbai on Tuesday due to Glenn Maxwell’s special performance, which propelled Australia into the semi-finals of the 2023 World Cup. After setting a strong total of 291 runs, Afghanistan had Australia at 91/7, but Maxwell’s explosive innings of 201* in the 22nd over turned the game around, leaving Trott feeling that players like Maxwell will always come back to trouble them.
“It’s a case where we put ourselves in a good position, and we needed to capitalize on it. We left a couple of opportunities open, and we gave players like Maxwell a chance. He’s riding along with it and played with a bit of freedom and accelerated them a little bit, and gave them some momentum. I thought it was a fantastic innings, a world-class innings. But, yes, we certainly helped them on the way,” Trott expressed after Afghanistan’s heart breaking loss.
The loss by three wickets meant that Afghanistan missed an opportunity to climb to the fourth position in the standings and secure their first-ever World Cup semi-final spot. They are now tied with Pakistan and New Zealand with eight points – only separated by their respective net run rates. Their final match is against a strong South African team in the knockout stage, and Trott hopes that the two points they lost against Australia will serve as a valuable lesson for his young team’s future.
Trott said, “I always think, ‘Could we have done a few things differently, bowled in different areas, used different bowlers here or there.’ Obviously, there are some things you might want to try differently in practice, developing a different delivery in certain areas, developing a different ball here or there. Until we learn from this and see how we can get better.”
However, Trott is reassured that Afghanistan’s team will bounce back from this disappointment before their final round-robin match against South Africa in Ahmedabad, just as they managed to secure three consecutive wins after their initial losses to the host India and New Zealand.
He added, “The New Zealand game we lost badly, and we bounced back, beat England, so yeah, there’s a precedent there. We need to be careful to not to get into a position to start talking about the future. There is a bit of a patch here, okay, let’s hope we can still get there. When you get an opportunity against a team like Australia, you’ve got to take it. They won’t just hand it to you. You’ve got to take it. And it’s a bitter pill to swallow, 10 points would have been a lot nicer to be sitting on right now. But hopefully, it’s after the South Africa game.”
Trott emphasized that Afghanistan should not blame any individual or play the blame game. He pointed out that Maxwell’s remarkable performance in the match was not solely due to errors in their bowling but rather a lesson for his inexperienced players that they should never take their foot off the pedal against a world-class player and opposition.