Reinforce middle-order: Afghanistan's project going forward

Eventually, under the brightest of World Cup lights, the resplendent Afghan wagon was brought to a screeching halt. The pitch at Tarouba and South Africa's pace pack was too much to contend for Rashid Khan & Co. who finished second best by some distance in the first semifinal. Even after being vanquished by nine wickets with 67 balls to spare, Afghanistan remained unequivocally the story of the tournament, alongside their vanquishers, who earned a first date with destiny.

The 56-all-out didn't necessarily take the gloss out of a stellar campaign for Afghanistan. As head coach Jonathan Trott admitted, the blowout only served to illuminate the little creases in their game that required refinement. Especially with the bat, where Afghanistan were heavily reliant on the opening pair of Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran to give heft to their totals.

Where Gurbaz and Zadran scored 281 and 231 runs in the tournament respectively, Afghanistan's next-highest on the aggregate charts was Azmatullah Omarzai, who scored his 111 runs at a lowly average of 13.87. As fate would have it, the prolific opening partnership, with three century stands to its name in this World Cup, was separated in the first over. The rest, unfortunately, couldn't pick up the slack.

"Well, I just think, South Africa bowled pretty well and they knew how to be bowling [in] the conditions once they saw how the pitch was behaving," Trott said reflecting on the defeat. "We've perhaps been a bit too reliant on Gurbaz and Ibrahim to get runs. Nobody else has got runs. And we need to find a reason for that. We need to get more batters in who are going to score runs and be more consistent like the openers have been and give us a chance in games.

"So that's the project for going forward. Certainly, in all formats as well, 50-over white ball cricket as well, getting middle-order batters and top-order batters like we have at the [top] with Ibrahim and Gurbaz. So that's the focus for now... We've got to find batters who can bat in the middle order in T20 cricket. I have an idea of who they are and the players that are going to be doing that. So, we'll be working really hard in the short term to get those players in playing T20 cricket and ODI cricket," he added.

While Afghanistan were able to work around a lack of batting depth previously in the tournament, they were shortchanged on the big night by a rather unforgiving pitch that offered lateral movement as well as unpredictable bounce. To further compound Afghanistan's woes, they were also victims of the scheduling, which gave them less than 48 hours of a turnaround since their exhilarating win over Bangladesh in their last Super 8 game at St Vincent.

Trott admitted the quick turnaround was less than ideal but was unwilling to use that as an excuse for the capitulation, urging his charges instead to learn from the defeat and find ways to win in such adverse match as well as tournament conditions.

"Yeah, obviously playing the last group game and then playing the first semi-final isn't ideal and travel yesterday and getting here and not really having a day off, if you like. But we knew the schedule, so that's not an excuse as such. When you go on in World Cups or tournaments, you can't have everything your own way, and you've got to fight and play against the odds which you've done at times and very proud of that but it's no it's not the reason why we didn't win today," he said.

"Obviously we only got back to the hotel at three o'clock [after the Bangladesh game] and then we had to leave at eight o'clock - five hours later so we didn't get much sleep so the guys obviously [were] very tired and [had] a lot to process really... emotionally, physically... so all new territory for the guys and it all plays its part, I suppose in a way.

"But we were out played today, and I'm sure the guys hopefully learn from this experience, I think we've obviously got one better than the previous 50-over World Cup in November and it's just about taking it step by step and hopefully we learn from today, the batters certainly, what it takes to play international cricket and play against a bowling side like South Africa on a pitch that's perhaps not conducive to high scoring runs and finding ways of winning games. And we've found ways of winning games, we just couldn't find a way today."

While South Africa's skipper Aiden Markram hailed Afghanistan's run as 'massive' and said the team was headed in the right direction, Trott himself opined that it was too soon to reflect on how far the team had come in this tournament as well as in white-ball cricket. That would sink in over time. Straight off the field, he confirmed that the overwhelming feeling was one of hurt.

"I think whenever you lose a game like this it's always going to hurt and it should hurt because we put so much into the sacrifices made by the players, coaching staff, management, officials, all that sort of stuff," Trott said.

"So, yeah, obviously it hurts at the moment, we arrived to the ground in high spirits ready to take on a strong South African side and make sure we gave a good account of ourselves and I feel like we haven't done that today so that's the most disappointing thing and I'm very proud of the guys - this one performance doesn't necessarily define the tournament."