Captain and star leg-spinner Rashid Khan\u2019s comment on Afghanistan\u2019s \u201csecond-best Asian side\u201d comes shortly after the team\u2019s disappointing Asia Cup campaign, in which they failed to reach the Super 4s following defeats against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan are among the most improved teams in international cricket over the last decade-and-a-half, from competing against Associate nations in the lower leagues to defeating top sides such as England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the 2023 ICC World Cup and reaching the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.<\/p>\n
The STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD\u2018People take things and twist them into something else\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThere is one thing that always goes around in the media-people calling us the second-best Asian team. We didn\u2019t say that, but I think we earned that tag through our performances. If you look at the Asia Cup, the World Cup semifinal, the ODI World Cup-we have beaten big teams,\u201d the star leg-spinner told the press ahead of the T20I series against Bangladesh, which got underway on Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Champions Trophy, we beat England. That\u2019s why we got the tag. In the future, if we don\u2019t perform well, we will definitely drop to number three, four, five, or six. I feel we haven\u2019t given ourselves that tag.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are always trying our best to become a better team and to perform well on the day. Sometimes you do well, sometimes you don\u2019t. That\u2019s part of the game. But your mindset should always be positive, with the hunger to perform. Sometimes people take things and twist them into something else, and then others start making fun of it. I feel like nowadays, the more you make fun of someone, the more people like you. And it\u2019s reaching a different level-and it doesn\u2019t look nice,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u2018Second-best Asian side\u2019 tag under spotlight after Asia Cup disappointment<\/p>\n Rashid\u2019s comment comes after a disappointing Asia Cup campaign, where the Afghans began their campaign with a Bangladesh defeated Afghanistan for the second time in as many meetings on Thursday, chasing down the 152-run target with four wickets and eight deliveries to spare in Sharjah to go 1-0 up in the three-match series.<\/p>\n Home<\/a>First Cricket<\/a>Rashid Khan slams media over Afghanistan\u2019s \u2018second-best Asian side’ tag: \u2018We didn’t say that’End of Article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Captain and star leg-spinner Rashid Khan\u2019s comment on Afghanistan\u2019s \u201csecond-best Asian side\u201d comes shortly after the team\u2019s disappointing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[68859,20813,81593,122279,68858,21425,64,63,740,1950,75507,122280,122281,85],"class_list":["post-193805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-afg-vs-ban","tag-afghanistan","tag-afghanistan-cricket","tag-afghanistan-cricket-team","tag-afghanistan-vs-bangladesh","tag-asia-cup","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-cricket-news","tag-rashid-khan","tag-rashid-khan-afghanistan","tag-second-best-asian-team","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAfghans had also defeated England in the Champions Trophy<\/a> earlier this year, because of which some sections of the press labelled them as the \u201csecond-best Asian side\u201d. When asked for his opinion on the tag, captain Rashid Khan felt that his team never asked for the tag, but earned it through their performances.<\/p>\n
\n94-run thrashing of Hong Kong<\/a>, but failed to reach the Super 4s after suffering a narrow 8-run defeat at the hands of Bangladesh, which was followed by a
\nsix-wicket loss in a must-win clash against Sri Lanka<\/a>.<\/p>\n