Published: Mar 12, 2015, 12:51 PM (IST)
Edited: Mar 12, 2015, 12:51 PM (IST)
Afghanistan have registered only one win in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 and on Friday they play their last match against a disappointed England side at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). A day before the match, Afghan fast bowler Hamid Hassan spoke to the media. (ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Points Table)
Q: Hamid, there’s been a lot of question marks over England’s batting in this tournament. Do you feel like you can do a bit of damage tomorrow?
Hamid Hassan (HH): Yeah, if we go with a plan and we bowl consistently in good areas. We have a very good bowling attack, and hopefully we’ll show good performance tomorrow against England.
Q: Was there a bit of intimidation factor? Is there also the same applying through England?
HH: The day is gone, so we’re not thinking about that game against Australia. So they scored and played very well in that game. But our focus is on tomorrow’s game. And we learnt a lot from our mistakes what we did in the past matches, and tomorrow we don’t want repeat them. Hopefully we’ll be better, a hundred percent on correct line and length. So we can put some pressure early on the England batsmen.
Q: Will it be easy to bowl against England than it was with Australia, who had David Warner and Glenn Maxwell and those type of players?
HH: It doesn’t matter. It’s better to be confidence on yourselves. So we play with high confidence and without pressure because this is the game that we have to win.
Q: Wanted to ask you, this is essentially about experience, because you bowled really well in certain stages but not very well in other parts of the game.
HH: I think that’s a common issue with all the associate sides. We play very, very well in stages of the game and fall off the game plan or lose concentration in the field with the bat and the ball. So we’re all trying to improve at a moment of weakness. If you want to put it that way, it will be average instead of slipping down and underperforming.
In the game against Australia, I thought we bowled really well up front. More than missing two or three an over. But unfortunately we went a little bit too short. They came back and grabbed the opportunity. One thing about the Afghans is they have huge character. You saw it against the win against Scotland. Not many sides can come back 110 or 120 whatever it was and 7 wickets down. They’re a very passionate group of cricketers that have huge pride in their performance for the fans at home, and that’s something that drives them. I think I answered that question for all of the associates. We all need to get better for longer periods of the game.
Q: It’s been a great learning curve?
HH: Yeah, of course. We’ve learned a lot, especially to me. If you bowl especially to good players in the game and a good side they won’t leave it. They have to punish you. So it’s better to be consistent all the time, and you have to think all the time where should I bowl and what is the plan for the bowl?
So it’s still a learning process for us, but hopefully in the future you will forget the mistakes that we did in these matches. And this was a good sign for our players so we can take this opportunity for the future and hopefully for upcoming matches. Like we have some more matches coming, T20 qualifiers are coming, so we have to apply there. And with the help of coach and the help of our other coaches we’ll continue our performance.
Q: After the Australian game, some of the players said they were scared?
HH: Scared? Afghan never scared, never scared.
Q: Does England have any fears like that for you?
HH: No, no fears, no nothing. We have to play bravely. So we’ll play bravely tomorrow. An Afghan is never scared.
Q: From the player’s point of view, how do you stress the importance of you being involved with the top teams?
HH: It’s always like pressure whenever we’re playing against biggest side in the world. But it’s also you can learn a lot from good players. My friend he asked the question, the game against Australia, you were scared. There’s nothing to be scared. But we haven’t played many games. That is why there is a little bit of, I say, like inexperience against them. If we play some more matches like a big team against big names in front of the media and people can watch, so maybe we can improve more and more. In the future, hopefully we’ll get some matches against bigger sides and we’ll continue our performance.
Courtesy: ICC
