Afghanistan will take another step to its development from Saturday as it takes on Canada in the ICC Intercontinental Cup 2009-10 at Sharjah. Afghans recently qualified for the first major ICC event in the country’s history when it won the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier in the United Arab Emirates.

From the frenetic Twenty20 game, Afghans coach Kabir Khan’s charges must now concentrate on four-day cricket and the specific challenges presented by the longer form of cricket. But having beaten defending champion Ireland in Dambulla, Sri Lanka last month, it’s not as if confidence will be low among the Afghans, who are rapidly becoming heroes in their homeland.

“Every team in the ICC Intercontinental Cup is more experienced than us, such as Ireland, Canada and Zimbabwe XI,” said Kabir. “They have been playing four-day cricket for a long time and our boys have only just come into the competition and are going through the learning process and we do have a lot of respect for the Canadian team.”

“On the other hand, our boys have been performing really well in the ICC Intercontinental Cup and they have beaten teams like Ireland and the Netherlands,” he maintained.

“Sharjah is normally a good batting track and our bowling has a lot of variety. Our batting goes to number nine and the boys have adjusted to the game quite well. We have prepared a lot for four-day cricket by playing innings matches and then two-day games before we played any of the Intercontinental Cup games. In Sri Lanka we played three two-day games and the boys are really talented and hungry to learn every aspect of the game and prove they can do well in any format of the game,” said Kabir.

Kabir further said he is very proud that his team beat Ireland as nobody had been able to achieve this for a very long time. “If we are good enough to beat Ireland then we are good enough to beat the other teams,” he added.

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