Last week, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore witnessed the historic Test match between India and Afghanistan. The rise of Asghar Stanikzai and his team has been an inspiring one and the cricketing fraternity showered the new entrants to the longest format of the game with blessings and praises. Last year, they got the Test status along with Ireland, who played earlier versus Pakistan in Dublin.

Although the pundits didn’t fancy the chances of the visitors to pull off an improbable win against the number one ranked Test team, not many would have expected them to get bundled out within two days of their debut Test. Their bowlers showed some quality against the Indian batsmen, except Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay, who scored magnificent centuries to go with an opening stand of 168 runs. India comprehensively won the match by an innings and 262 runs.

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Meanwhile, the former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly has urged the young squad to not get disheartened by the defeat rather work out the areas of improvement going ahead in the future. He also brought forth the examples of some other teams and their difficulties during their initial days of Test cricket.

In his column for Times of India (TOI), Ganguly wrote: “No surprises were thrown up at the Chinnaswamy Stadium but at the same time not many expected that the India-Afghanistan Test match would get over in just two days. The Afghan boys shouldn’t worry about how long the Test lasted but should rewind the entire two days to realize what they need to do to get better in the longer format of the game.”

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He further added, “This has happened with many other teams. When Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Zimbabwe were inducted into test cricket, their initial days were also sketchy. It is with the time that they got better. Afghanistan, and for that matter the other new entrant, Ireland, will have to be given more time to understand and come to terms with the demands of the longest format of the game. With time they will learn.”