Veteran Afghanistan batter Rahmat Shah believes his team’s extensive experience of playing in India will give them a significant advantage over New Zealand in the one-off Test, which commences in Noida on Monday.
Shah, who has featured in Test matches for Afghanistan in Bengaluru (2018 against India), Dehradun (2019 against Ireland), and Lucknow (2019 against West Indies), expressed confidence that this familiarity will benefit his side.
“Our past experience in India will help us. We had our home ground in Noida and in Lucknow, and we have played a lot of matches here and done a lot of camps here,” Shah told Cricbuzz. “We are also accustomed to the weather and pitch conditions of India, so we certainly have an edge.”
The 31-year-old top-order batter, who is Afghanistan’s leading run-scorer in both Tests and ODIs, is eager to challenge New Zealand, the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) winners.
“We will try to give them a tough time. They have won the ICC Test Championship and we tried to have the best of preparations and we are looking forward to the challenge that is lying ahead,” Shah said.
Shah also revealed that he has made several technical adjustments to better adapt to Indian conditions. “I just tried to concentrate more and practice more (to make technical adjustments).
Earlier my shoulder used to get open and I tried to make it sideways and tried to straighter my alignment,” he explained. “When the fast bowler used to come, I used to move towards off stump a bit more and as a result I used to fall down.”
The Afghan batter added, “I used to play my shot through my wrist but now I am trying to take my feet and just worked hard to get it into my batting template.”
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