Sri Lanka outplayed us – Jonathan Trott

Afghanistan Head Coach Jonathan Trott conceded that Sri Lanka outplayed his team in all three departments in the recently concluded bilateral series between the countries. While Sri Lanka won the one-off Test match, they swept Afghanistan 3-0 in the ODIs before taking an unassailable 2-0 in the T-20 series. On Wednesday, Afghanistan managed to record a three-run win in the last T-20 International, a dead rubber, at Dambulla.

The South African born former England Test cricketer Jonathan Trott conceded that his team was thoroughly outplayed in the series

“We should have done better than this. Sri Lanka have played good cricket and not allowed us to play good cricket. We could have won a few games or made a few games difficult to win for the opposition. For example, in the last T-20 International, they needed 36 in the last two overs and ended up getting 33 from the last two overs. We need to be more clinical. We hope to get our combination and form right before the T-20 World Cup in June,” Trott told journalists.

The Afghans missed their star bowler Rashid Khan, who is recovering after undergoing back surgery. The tourists were banking heavily on left-arm spinner Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, in Rashid’s absence, but he too was injured during the tour and had to pull out

“We missed Rashid Khan and Mujeeb-ur-Rahman. Any team that doesn’t have Rashid will miss him heavily. The players who have got opportunities need to make most of those opportunities and I hope they learned something in this series,” Trott explained.

While Afghanistan’s bowling wasn’t steady, their batting had too many collapses and to make matters worse they were sloppy on the field dropping quite a few catches. Fielding, Trott said, was one area that needed definite improvement.

“Drop catches nearly cost us during the last game as well. It has cost us a lot in the past. Certainly, one thing we have to work on is our catching. Fielding will be one thing that we will discuss when we take into account team selections moving forward.”

Afghanistan will begin a T-20 and ODI series against Ireland later this month in UAE while Sri Lanka will travel to Bangladesh for a multi-format series that involves two Tests, three ODIs and three T-20 Internationals. Both teams will then travel to United States for the T20 World Cup.