T20 World Cup | Jonathan Trott’s press conference after the loss against South Africa
“It’s quite heartbreaking. We’ve worked very hard for the last year and a half… with our hopes of going deep into the T20 World Cup, but sometimes it doesn’t go your way. The most important thing is the mindset we played with and the effort we put in during our first two games,” Rashid said, acknowledging the emotional toll of the result.For a side that has been steadily rising in world cricket, the loss was particularly harsh. Still, Rashid believes the experience, however painful, could serve a greater purpose. “It will help us. It’s not just the upcoming games but the upcoming cricket that we have. So we can take a lot of positives from these two games,” he said.The lingering sting of near misses is not unfamiliar territory for Afghanistan. Rashid drew parallels with their harrowing defeat to Australia in the 2023 ODI World Cup, when they reduced the opposition to 91 for 7 before Glenn Maxwell’s blistering double century turned the match on its head. That memory, Rashid said, stayed with the team until they made a rematch at the 2024 T20 World Cup.“It’s very difficult to lose a game in our hands like a couple of times and then it just slips out of your hands. It doesn’t go out of your mind. Just like the game we played against Australia in the 2023 ODI World Cup, it never goes away until we win against them in the 2024 T20 World Cup,” Rashid said.Beyond the immediate disappointment, Rashid pointed to a wider problem facing Afghanistan, namely the lack of regularity against the top opposition. The limited bilateral opportunities against top teams make World Cup matches “disproportionately challenging”, he said.“As a team, if you don’t get a chance to play against a big team regularly, that will happen. If we had played more T20s against South Africa, New Zealand, we would have had an idea where this team can beat us and where we can improve. You only have to play them once a year and that too in the World Cup. It’s a time and opportunity when you don’t have a choice to make a mistake,” he said.The realities of scheduling also often leave teams like Afghanistan with little room for error.“If you play two matches in four days against New Zealand and South Africa, your World Cup can be over in four. We lost both matches in four days; most of the time we are out of the World Cup. So the pressure is different. If you make a small mistake, you are out,” Rashid said.Greater exposure, he believes, would help Afghanistan better understand and counter the strategies of elite teams. “If you play them, you get an idea. If you don’t play, they come with a new plan every time … as we saw in New Zealand, they came with an aggressive mindset.”