Asia Cup: Afghanistan revelling in familiar conditions | Cricket News – Times of India

SHARJAH: Much of the talk leading to the Asia Cup here in UAE has been around how the conditions have become as good as home conditions for India and Pakistan. However, as Afghanistan roared into the Super 4s here in the Asia Cup after beating Bangladesh on Tuesday, captain Mohammad Nabi declared this is his team’s territory more than any other team.
“Since the last 15 years, most of the times we have played in Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, we know the conditions well. Sometimes in Sharjah a low total is tough to chase, that’s why in a low chase the batsmen didn’t throw early wickets and at the end we targeted the bowlers and won the game,” Nabi said after the match before adding: “As a team in this Asia Cup we are showing that Afghanistan have quality batsmen, quality bowlers and quality fielders.”

Afghanistan’s rise as a cricketing nation has largely depended on their unconventional spinners. Their batting has always been shaky. Nabi has pointed out that the team has laid emphasis on batting deep. “In these two games we showed we can chase totals. Earlier, oppositions used to say that Afghanistan cannot chase. But we were quite good, were not under pressure and had proper balance and hopefully we do well in the next round against big teams.”
After their convincing win over Sri Lanka in the tournament opener, Nabi had stressed that they took pride in their cricket as a Test-playing nation. They also came early to Dubai to prepare for the tournament which is showing in their batting depth. “At the end, we have the ability in the death that we can hit the ball really hard like Najibullah Zadran did (against Bangladesh). In the middle we have players like Ibrahim who can rotate the strike and hit fours in between,” Nabi pointed out.