India cannot take Afghanistan lightly, they are a very good and mature team: Harbhajan Singh

Former India spinner Harbhajan Singh stated that India cannot afford to take Afghanistan lightly given the kind of form they have been in during the ongoing T20 World Cup. Afghanistan, who qualified for the Super12 by the virtue of being one of the top 10 teams in the ICC rankings, have defeated Scotland and Namibia while losing to Pakistan so far.

India, on the other hand, have nearly knocked themselves out after losing against Pakistan and New Zealand in succession and will have to rely on certain other results going their way to make it into the semi-finals. They play Afghanistan on November 3 followed by Scotland and Namibia on November 5 and 8, respectively.

“You cannot take Afghanistan lightly, they are a very good and mature team. They have decent batters and their spin duo of Mujeeb Ur Rahman-Rashid Khan is a lethal combination. This format is such that, till the end, you cannot predict which team will win or lose. The team that is ahead after the first six overs is likely to have the advantage. The chances of making a comeback become very slim after that,” Harbhajan told Sportskeeda.

India have met Afghanistan twice in the T20 World Cup, winning on both occasions. However, Harbhajan reckoned that records will make no difference, as the team that plays better on the day will win.

“As a cricketer, I don’t believe in past records. I find stats useless. What has happened before, we cannot assume that it will happen again. If that was the case, we beat Pakistan 12 times, and we should have won the 13th time as well. We cannot change the past. What matters is how we play in the present. We had beaten them earlier but that Afghanistan team was in the making, now they are ready. That’s a big difference. This Afghanistan team is capable of defeating big sides.”

As things stand, India will not qualify only by winning their remaining encounters. They need to win all three games by a big margin to improve their net run rate and pray that New Zealand loses to Afghanistan. In that case, India will be tied on 6 points with net run rate coming into play for further qualification.