Reigning ICC Intercontinental Cup champions Afghanistan takes on hosts Canada in the third match of the new season starting today (Tuesday 2 August 2011) in Toronto. Afghanistan won the final of the competition last year after beating Scotland and the side will be hoping for a strong performance away from home to begin the competition on the right foot and walk away with full points. Having never won the tournament, Canada will want to make sure it starts positively and begin this year\u2019s season with a victory on home soil.
\n
\nAfghanistan fast bowler Hamid Hassan, who was the leading wicket-taker in the last tournament with 43 scalps, is confident ahead of the team\u2019s first four-day fixture of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve played some domestic three-day games in Pakistan and also in Sri
\nLanka ahead of this first fixture and we\u2019ve been very focused so I hope we
\ntake what we\u2019ve learnt with us to Canada for our first match of this
\ncompetition.
\n\u201cWhen we first started playing four-day cricket it took us time to embrace
\nit but now we enjoy it a lot, especially in the last tournament, so
\nhopefully we can enjoy it again this time. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been Canada but we\u2019ve been told the weather will be good and
\nhopefully the wickets will seam around so I\u2019m able to be effective with the
\nball,\u201d concluded Hamid.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Canada\u2019s side features some young blood, joining the old guard,
\nwith new captain Jimmy Hansra at the helm, who has taken over from fellow
\nsquad member Ashish Bagai, who recently relinquished the captaincy that he
\nhad held for two years.<\/p>\n
The team features a number of young players, including Hiral Patel, while
\nnewly appointed skipper Hansra is confident his side can do well: \u201cWe\u2019re a
\nfairly young team and we\u2019re going to be taking what we learnt at the 50-over
\nICC Cricket World Cup and try to translate that into the four-day
\ncompetition we\u2019re about to start playing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good that we\u2019ve got a three year window for this tournament and it\u2019s
\ngood for us to start against the current champions, Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to have a stronger team upfront as it will help us know where we
\nstand and it should help us to prepare for the tournament and the youngsters
\nare ready to go and we\u2019re ready to put up a good show.<\/p>\n
\u201cHiral Patel and Ruvindu Gunasekera are two good youngsters coming in from
\nour domestic cricket, who also featured at the World Cup, and we\u2019ve good
\nbowlers who will need to help us for this tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfghanistan is an experienced side whereas we\u2019re young and we\u2019re trying to
\nbring the passion for Canada and cricket together for this tournament but I
\nfeel with a three-year window to play these fixtures we will continue to
\nimprove no matter what happens with this first game,\u201d added Hansra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reigning ICC Intercontinental Cup champions Afghanistan takes on hosts Canada in the third match of the new season starting today (Tuesday 2 August 2011) in Toronto. Afghanistan won the final of the competition last year after beating Scotland and the side will be hoping for a strong performance away from home to begin the competition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}