'You can't win games or tournaments like this...': Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott left disappointed with team's effort in Asia Cup

Afghanistan head coach Jonathan Trott was left highly disappointed with his team's performance in Asia Cup 2025. Notably, many had labelled Rashid Khan & Co. as the 'dark horses' coming into the tournament, however they ended up falling at the first hurdle itself and got knocked of the continental tournament with their 6-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka on Thursday.

Afghanistan only managed to record a single victory in the tournament and that came against Hong Kong. They then lost their second fixture against Bangladesh and recorded a defeat in their penultimate group stage match against Sri Lanka as well.

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Following the match against Sri Lanka, Trott remarked that the side made too many errors in the batting, bowling and fielding departments.He further went on to say that a team cannot win a match or tournament by giving such poor performances.

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"It was very disappointing and a hard one to swallow. We thought we were in a good position, believing 170 after Nabi's heroics was a good total. However, their batters played rather well, and we sort of aided them with our bowling and fielding. We didn't start well in the power play with our bowling, which gave them a leg up. We just weren't at the races and made too many basic errors in batting, bowling, and in the field. You can't win cricket games, especially in tournaments like this, with such errors," Trott said while speaking to the reporters.

"We came here with huge ambitions, and I was very ambitious about what we could achieve. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to do that, and we need to figure out why. We have a lot of T20 cricket coming up, including the World Cup in February. All the coaches, including myself, and all the players need to think long and hard about where we went wrong and how we need to get better. Sometimes these setbacks can help us regroup and ensure we don't make the same mistakes in the future," he added.

Afghanistan to face Bangladesh next

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's next assignment will be a white-ball series against Bangladesh. The three-match T20I series between the two teams will commence from October 2 while the three-match one-day assignment will begin from October 8. Rashid Khan & Co. will be looking to put the Asia Cup behind them and improve their performance in the shortest format.