Afghanistan captain Gulbadin Naib has stressed on the need to bat sensibly ahead of the team’s second World Cup clash against Sri Lanka on Tuesday. Afghanistan opened its campaign with a seven-wicket defeat to reigning champion Australia, which chased down 208 thanks to half-centuries from David Warner and Aaron Finch.
Despite the result, there were plenty of positives for Afghanistan which fought back from 77-5 after losing opening batsmen Mohammad Shahzad and Hazratullah Zazai for ducks.
Najibullah Zadran was particularly impressive with the bat and Gulbadin believes his side is more than capable of posting a big total against Sri Lanka.
VIEW: World Cup 2019, South Africa vs India: Men in Blue in high spirits ahead of Proteas clash
“My message has been one thing, just to look at the positives. If you look, we missed out early on and then we scored 200-plus so if we have wickets in hand it could have been 300-plus,” he said on Monday.
The skipper said that his side needs to be more careful about not giving away wickets easily and score more than 80-90 runs in the last 10 overs.
“Australia are the best side, they are a champion side, they played hard against us so one thing the guys took away is the positives if they stay in the wicket.”
Sri Lanka is also looking to bounce back after suffering a heavy defeat in its opening game against New Zealand, losing by ten wickets after being bowled out for just 136 runs.
But while the Cardiff pitch appears to favour seamers, Gulbadin is confident his world-class spinners Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman can take advantage.
“If you look at the Sri Lanka team the last two years they have been struggling in the one-day matches so we have an opportunity to do well against them,” he said.
“I hope that if we can play 50 overs, especially in the batting, maybe we can beat them, but they are also a good team and we can not take them easy.”
Comments
SHARE