Jonathan Trott rues missed opportunities against Australia

Afghanistan head coach Jonathan Trott regrets the missed opportunities in the field after his team was havoced by a Glenn Maxwell special in Mumbai that powered the men in yellow into the World Cup semis on Tuesday.

Having posted a formidable 291 batting first, Afghanistan had Australia into their clutches at 91/7 but Maxwell threw caution to the wind after earning a reprieve on 33 in the 22nd over, and went on to score a blistering 201* to script a historic win. Trott felt the couple of dropped catches for someone as dangerous as Maxwell was always going to come back to haunt them. 

It's a case of we got ourselves into position and should have capitalised, obviously dropped two chances, and given a person like Maxwell a chance. He's going to run with it and he almost played with a bit of freedom and almost freed him up a little bit and gave a bit of momentum back to them. I thought it was a spectacular innings, a world-class innings. But, yeah, we certainly helped him along the way," Trott told the media after Afghanistan's heart wrenching loss.

The three wicket loss meant Afghanistan failed to climb to the fourth spot in the league standings and bolster their case for the first ever WC semis berth. As of now, they’re now in a mid table scuffle, tied on eight points alongside New Zealand and Pakistan- separated only by their respective Net Run Rates. Their final match is against a potent South Africa side with a knockouts spot up for grabs, and Afghanistan’s head coach hoped this loss would have taught his young unit a lesson for the future. 

I always think we could have done a few things slightly different, bowled certain areas, different bowlers here or there," Trott said. "Obviously, there are certain things you would like to try differently now, but hindsight is a great thing. And so, it's a good lesson for our players because, in this game, if you take your eye off the ball just a little bit and you think too far ahead, and you try to start thinking about other things instead of just worrying about taking the next wicket, this game can bite you pretty quickly.

"Obviously it's a disappointing loss, but it's an experience for a young side, developing. We need to make sure that we learn from these sorts of things. And just how cut-throat cricket is at the highest level and how you need to be on your game, not for 70 overs, but for 100 overs."

Trott mentioned that while there’s no point playing blame game, Afghanistan will be hurting from the fact that a struggling batter snatched victory from their hands. Nor did they alter their tactics to force a false shot. Fighting severe cramps, the big show got a lot of chances in his hitting arc and fittingly dispatched those out of the park. 

There's no pointing fingers, there's no blaming," Trott said. "I said to the team, as a bowler, is there anything you would have perhaps now done differently with regards to, in practice, developing a different delivery, would you have perhaps bowled different balls? As long as we learn from it and see how we can get better.

"But it is difficult to get over the fact that one player's got 200 and the rest of the team have got 80 probably. So that's a difficult thing to understand and the boys are hurting, and you'll certainly be wishing they could have it back."

Trott stated that while the shoulders shrugged in the ground as quickly as Maxwell’ knock proceeded, there’s a lesson for his inexperience bowling attack and never take your foot off the gas, especially not against a remarkable player and a world class opposition. 

"You give any world-class player two lives; he's going to hurt you. So for the players coming in and the players developing all around the game, it's not just about bowling in the nets. It's about practicing your fielding. Make sure your fielding is improving all the time. Because it's ended up costing us a game today, an important game. So that's a little thing everyone can learn from.

"When, unfortunately, the second catch went down, everyone just seemed to be waiting for Maxwell to get out. I didn't see a lot of encouragement or people cheering and encouraging each other. It seemed like the attitude was a little bit, well, hopefully we'll still win. When you get an opportunity against a side like Australia, you've got to grab it. They're not going to just give it to you. And you've got to take it. If you get a chance to take it, you've got to take it. And that's the type of things we'll learn from today and what we just spoke about in the dressing-room."

However Trott remained optimistic of his team’s chances of reaching the playoffs, bouncing back from this disappointing loss, just like they did earlier in the tournament to win three games on the bounce after consecutive defeats tio India and New Zealand. 

“We lost the New Zealand game pretty heavily and came back and won the next game," he said. "We lost the India game very heavily, came back and beat England - so yeah there is evidence of us coming back. No time to muck around, we've got to pick ourselves up and learn from the experience. And there's some great learning points for the guys going forward. But yeah, it's a bitter pill to swallow. It would really be nice just sitting here with 10 points. But hopefully that's after the South Africa game."