Daily Times

Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott will try to plot the downfall of England when his current side meets his former team in a World Cup match in New Delhi on Sunday.

And yet it was only because of the illness of another fellow former England batsman in Graham Thorpe that he found himself in charge of Afghanistan at all, taking over in July last year for a Twenty20 tour of Ireland ahead of the T20 World Cup in Australia. The 42-year-old Trott, who played over 200 international matches, worked as a batting coach for the England team on their tour of India in 2021.

For all their undoubted talent in the T20 format, where spinner Rashid Khan is a globe-trotting star of the franchise circuit, Afghanistan have struggled in the 50-over game.

Convincing defeats by Bangladesh and India in their opening two games of this World Cup mean Afghanistan have now lost 14 successive matches in the tournament — a run stretching back to their lone win, against Scotland, in 2015. A lack of runs, for all Hashmatullah Shahidi and Azmatullah Omarzai scored fifties in an eight-wicket reverse against India last time out, has been at the heart of Afghanistan’s ODI struggles.

In Trott they have a coach who as a batsman was renowned for his concentration and an attention to detail exemplified by his deliberate marking of guard. Born in Cape Town to a British father and South African mother, Trott played for South Africa youth sides from Under-15 to Under-19 level.

But he then took advantage of his British passport and his relationship with Bob Woolmer, who coached both South Africa and Warwickshire, to arrange a trial with the English county.

Having established himself at the Midlands club, Trott enjoyed a spectacular entry into Test cricket with a hundred on debut in a 2009 Ashes-deciding win against Australia at The Oval.

It was the start of a fine England career that yielded nearly 4,000 runs, including nine hundreds, in 52 Tests at an average of 44.08. Yet having been dubbed a “rock” by Andy Flower, the then England coach, Trott was forced to make an abrupt exit from the 2013/14 Ashes tour of Australia with a stress-related illness having struggled against the short ball.