ICC World Cup 2023 | Loss to Aus, a bitter pill for Afghans: Trott

Jonathan Trott. Pic/Satej Shinde

Afghanistan head coach Jonathan Trott admitted having hardly any options for his bowlers to counter Glenn Maxwell, whose knock of 201 not out went against Afghanistan as they lost the encounter by three wickets at the Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday.

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Having posted 291-5, the Afghans were in the driver's seat after they claimed seven Australian wickets by the 19th over with the scoreboard reading 91. However, Mujeeb Ur Rahman dropped Maxwell on 33 off spinner Noor Ahmad's bowling and the game turned in favour of the five-time champions from there. "He [Maxwell] kept hitting them in the stands, we cannot put fielders in the stands. I wish we could have. But full credit to him, the way he played to get a double hundred is phenomenal. He deserved to win the game," Trott said during the post-match press conference.

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When asked how he would lift the morale of the team after such a defeat heading into their last league game against South Africa at Ahmedabad on Friday, Trott said: "Be resilient. We lost the New Zealand game pretty heavily [by 149 runs] and came back and won the next game [against Pakistan by eight wickets]. We lost the India game very heavily [by eight wickets]. Then came back to beat England. So, 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 [defeat against Australia] a bitter pill to swallow. It would have been really nice just sitting here with 10 points. But hopefully, that's after the South Africa game."