Richard Pybus will take charge of his first Test as Afghanistan’s head coach on Saturday and urged the International Cricket Council (ICC) to allot more games to the side going forward.
The match against India will be Afghanistan’s 13th in the longest format, and Pybus said that maintaining continuity requires a team playing more than merely two Tests a year.
“The onus is with the ICC, you know. It’s one thing to get full membership, but then you need to get a full fixture list. [too]. And it can’t be that the development of teams is just based on the exposure they get at World Cups. I don’t think anyone could have conceived 20 years ago where Afghanistan cricket would be now.
“When the series started to become two-Test affairs, to me it made absolutely no sense because you don’t want a series which is a tie. There needs to be a three or a five-Test series. I think credit to the BCCI, they’ve given us plenty of cricket this year, which is fantastic for us to be able to develop,” Pybus said before the one-off Test on Friday.
Pybus takes over from Jonathan Trott, who secured the nation’s fourth Test victory over Zimbabwe in 2024. Though the Englishman’s four-year spell coincided with one of Afghanistan’s most successful tenures, Pybus said he will take his own approach in leading the team.
“I did have a chat with Jonathan to hear from him about the role, just to really get a sense of his journey. And also to congratulate him, because he’s done so well in helping to develop the side. I start with a blank slate, though. So, I’m not really interested in how other coaches’ thoughts, feelings, perceptions were of players,” Pybus said.
One of the biggest challenges Pybus faces is getting some of Afghanistan’s biggest names to play regularly in the whites.
For the game in New Chandigarh, leg-spinner Rashid Khan and opening batter Ibrahim Zadran are the notable absentees.
Explaining the reason for their omission, Pybus said, “Rashid has got this long-standing back complaint. He’s got such a huge volume of cricket that he needs to manage himself. I look forward to having that conversation to see how we can support him, not just with the opportunity to play some red-ball cricket, but just generally make sure he can play as long and as healthy as possible for Afghanistan. Ibrahim is coming back from a little bit of a niggle. [Otherwise] He would have been in contention for this series.”
The last time Afghanistan played in India, it lost by an innings and 262 runs with neither of its innings lasting more than two sessions.
But this year, the Afghans are hoping to make a fist of it, up against an Indian team that has lost two of its last three home series and is undergoing a transition.
“We’re fully focused on this Test match. Where India is at, as Gautam [Gambhir] and the skipper settling their side and building it and developing it, all sides go through that period. Our focus is on, as cliché as it sounds, really our controllables; what we need to do, and just like the Indian players have come out of the IPL and they’ve got to transition very quickly, our boys are just coming out of a one-day competition. So, it’s really about getting your Test match head on, getting your mindset right, getting your game plans right, going out and delivering it,” Pybus said.
Published on Jun 05, 2026
