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Originally Posted by Donal C
I wouldnt look into stats too much when they've played so little, especially with Associate players. Balbirnie for us had an ODI average of like 12 after 9 games, yet he's beginning to shine now.
Hashmatullah had some outrageous scores at domestic level, 4 hundreds including two doubles in 7 games or something, and while domestic level their might suck, it has to count for something.
Shafiqullah was one of the only bats to play remotely well versus Bangladesh at the world t20 as well IIRC. They wont turn around their fortunes much but they couldnt be worse than the current lot.
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Thats true, and with none of us actually having seen any of these Associate players its hard to tell. That being said, are they really going to change AFG's overall competitiveness? I highly doubt it. The inclusion of those 2 aren't going to magically make AFG capable of chasing down 300+ against a top side, and aren't going to make them any less likely of collapsing to sub 100 scores either.
The other issue is if you've only played 9-10 games, it only takes one blinder to bump up your stats, especially against teams that no longer even have ODI status like Canada/Netherlands.
They could turn out to be solid players in the future, but I'm just saying the core of AFG's batting seems to be Nabi, Mangla, Ahmadi, and Ghani.
One or 2 great performances doesn't necessarily indicate their true value. Naeem Islam hit a fabulous run a ball 100 last year against England Lions in England to chase down 320+. But he's a pretty poor ODI batsman overall.
How hard can it be to average 30 at a decent strike rate against the likes of Canada or Kenya?
At any rate, Associate sides sometimes make questionable selections, but then so too do sides like Pakistan leaving out Umar Akmal from the Test side for god knows how long. NZ also didn't select Matt Henry who has ridiculous stats so far and genuine pace. We left out Minhajul Abedin I think in our first WC in 99 only to have him included after public protests. I think Habibul Bashar was also left out of our inaugural Test match until protesters forced his inclusion and he's still our all time leading run scorer.