Steyn: Afghanistan can win an ICC tournament in next decade

Dale Steyn backed Afghanistan to win an ICC tournament within the next decade. To do so, he suggested that they inject patience into their individual and collective games.

Afghanistan beat England in a thriller in Lahore but couldn’t make the knockouts of the Champions Trophy 2025. They lost their first match to South Africa and looked in trouble against Australia as well before rain intervened.

“Back in the day, a lot of players would go play county cricket,” Steyn said, “Or they would go play first-class cricket to improve their skills and improve their patience really. I think we live in a time now where people are not patient enough. We can hardly watch two seconds on an Instagram story and it just feels like the Afghanistan players are similar when they’re playing their cricket.

“They want things to happen so quickly. This ball must be a wicket, there’s no patience to building up and taking a wicket. And sometimes, the batters are the same, they’re batting in the first over. There’s so much movement happening in the crease, so they’re trying to hit a six and they’re trying to get the game going.

“I think a lot of them play T20 cricket around the world, which is great, it’s great for their pockets and it’s great for them to learn. But, maybe, spending some time in four-day games might help, because one-day cricket is essentially a shortened version of a Test match. It’s got its moments where T20 is applied. But patience is one of the biggest things that Afghanistan players need to learn, and once they get that down, honestly, in the next decade, they could win ICC tournaments, for sure.”

Wasim Jaffer, who also praised Afghanistan’s rapid rise at the international level, identified their inability to hit the ground running in tournaments and fragility in their batting line-up as issues they need to look into going forward.

Ibrahim Zadran made a match-winning 177 against England but Sediqullah Atal couldn’t convert his 85 against Australia into a big score. Their top-three have not set up a game collectively and Rahmanullah Gurbaz, arguably their best batter, finished with 16 runs in three games.

“Afghanistan are on the rise,” Jaffer said “And you’ve got to applaud them because they’ve played semi-finals [at the 2024 T20 World Cup], they’ve beaten good teams and, when they beat anybody it’s not an upset anymore. So, you can expect Afghanistan to put on a show.”

“They will be disappointed [with] the way they started the first game. In such a short tournament, it’s important to start really well because you don’t get too many chances. One loss and you could be out of the tournament, which happened here.

“Their batting needs to improve as well. We say that they are not a big chasing team. Their [Nos.] 3, 4, 5, even though Atal played well today, Rahmat Shah needs to be more consistent. He got a 90 in the first game, [Hashmatullah] Shahidi got stuck today, Gurbaz is their main player, he had a very off tournament. That’s where I think they lacked this time.”

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