Growing in confidence with every opportunity that has come their way, Afghanistan cricket captain Asghar Stanikzai said his team knows how to beat the big guns of the game but the ICC has to give it enough chances.
"You can make a comparison between Afghanistan and other associates. Many associates have been playing for last 30-40 years. They have been participating in World Cup tournaments. If you see our history, at the elite level we're playing only recently. We have really done well something other nations could not do it in 30-40 years," Stanikzai said.
"It shows how much talent we have to play at the elite level. Definitely we need big games with full members to increase our experience level.
“If you play within the Associates we will get experience from each other. But if we take on Full Members it will help us more," he added referring to their 3-2 win in ODIs and 2-0 win in the T20Is in October last year.
Afghanistan won the ODI series against Zimbabwe 3–2 and became the first Associate side to beat a Full Member nation in a multi-game ODI series and followed it up with a 2-0 win in T20Is.
"We know how to beat Full Members at the Elite level. We have got that experience. As long as we play more games with Full Members, we will get that experience and the distance between the associates and full members will definitely go away," he said on the eve of their World Twenty20 opener against Sri Lanka in the Super 10s.
Sri Lanka survived a scare in the 2015 World Cup before winning narrowly by four wickets and the Afghanistan skipper said they have it in them to upset the defending champions.
"We have players who can perform and change the game at the end of the day. We are not only participating but looking forward to beat some big teams," he said.
In the Asia Cup, they failed to make the main round after losing to UAE in a qualifier but the skipper said they've sorted out the mistakes.
"We fielded poorly in the Asia Cup, dropped six-seven catches against UAE. any team can beat you if you drop six seven catches...We have had good preparation in the last two months. We went to Gujarat and had a two-week camp. We played five T20 games then we were in the Asia Cup. We won three in qualifying ground."
The newly-built Greater Noida cricket stadium is the home ground for Afghanistan cricketers after the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA), the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in December last year.
"We appreciate BCCI and the Greater Noida to give us the home ground. It's so useful. It is not only helping infrastructure also helping in other sport. They proved the friendship."
Image: Afghanistan's Asghar Stanikzai
Photograph: Andrew Biraj/Reuters
