Afghanistan Team Captain
Rashid Khan: “It’s a dream for us to be in the semi-finals. The way we started the tournament, the belief came when we beat New Zealand. It’s unbelievable. The only guy who put us inthe semi-finals was Brian Lara and we proved him right. When we met him at a welcome party, I told him we won’t let you down. We thought 130-135 was a good score but we fell 15 runs short. We knew they would come hard at us and we knew that is what we could take advantage of. We didn’t need to do anything extra, just be clear in our plans. We wanted to make people back home happy, that was the discussion we had and everyone did a wonderful job. [On the new ball bowlers] In T20s if you get a good start, it helps us in the middle overs. They have given great starts to us in the whole competition. It makes it easier for us to go harder at the batsmen. They have delivered, they were very clear in their minds. [On the Gulbadin situation] Rain is something not in our hands but mentally we knew we have to play 20 overs and take 10 wickets. That’s the only way we could win. But Gulbadin he had some cramps. But his wicket was invaluable to us. It’s a massive celebration back home. It’s a big achievement for us as well. We have done that at U-19 level but at this World Cup, I don’t have any words to describe the feeling back home. We have to go into the semis with a very clear mind and make sure we enjoy the occasion.” He signs off with a message in Pashto.
Bangladesh Captain
Najmul Hossain Shanto: “I think we bowled really well. As a bowling unit we did a lot of good things. But as a batting unit we made some poor decisions specially in the middle overs. Normal plan was first three wickets we go hard, especially in the first six overs, and if we lose early wickets we play normally. But we didn’t execute that. Whole tournament we bowled really well, especially Rishad the new guy came and bowled really well, I am really happy for him. As a fielding team we did a lot of good things, took really good catches. As a batting unit we really need to improve a not. Going forward we need to think about our batting. [On the rain delays] It happened but we can’t make excuses. Also with the ball getting wet it was coming on nicely so that was a good thing.”
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Player of the Match
Player of the match is Naveen-ul-Haq: “We have worked so hard over the past few years and we were dreaming and working for this day. I’m lost for words. [On his spell] We always knew that they were going hard in the powerplay to chase the total down in 12.1 overs so we knew we were in the game as long as we kept picking wickets. We had confidence that these wickets are not high-scoring wickets. As long as we don’t give easy runs we knew we would have a chance.”