Toby Radford on Afghanistan's batting challenge

Afghanistan's newly appointed batting coach Toby Radford is relishing the challenge of working with a gifted group of cricketers. On the eve of his first assignment, against West Indies, Radford spoke about stepping into the role, the challenges ahead, and the direction he hopes to take Afghanistan's batting.

How excited are you for this new challenge?

Very excited. It's clear how the side has gone forward in the last few years, doing extremely well on an international scale. The opportunity to work with a good team and a lot of good young players coming through is really exciting. Jonathan Trott has done a great job and the whole setup is going really well. It's a nice opportunity to work with good players in a team that's doing well and moving forward.

What will be your biggest challenge, joining the team so close to the West Indies series, with just one assignment to prepare the batters ahead of the World Cup?

It'll be about getting to know the Afghanistan players and how they play, quickly hitting the ground running, building good relationships, and working on any areas we can improve. My remit is batting, so I'll be working with those batters to see where they're at and where we can keep improving. Having worked with West Indies a lot, I'll have a good idea about playing against them.

What excites you about the West Indies series ahead?

West Indies have had great success in this format over the years, winning the World Cup recently. They're a side that can really fire in that competition and take great pride in it. It'll be a good test of where we're at. Hopefully we can take positive vibes into the World Cup from that series, using it to improve and take forward into the World Cup just a few weeks away. It should be a very competitive series.

You've worked closely with Gurbaz during the BPL and also seen several Afghan players up close there. How do you think that experience will help when you step into the Afghanistan dressing room?

Gurbaz was brilliant. It was the first time I've met and worked with him, which was great over the last couple of weeks. He's a really exciting talent. It was good to work with him and carrying that on over the next few weeks will be really interesting. I love the way he spoke with the team in Bangladesh—very positive and experienced. He's going to offer a lot.

Recently, Gurbaz mentioned that he doesn't want to change his game because he feels it's working well for him. At the same time, there's a view that he may benefit from picking his moments a little better. What's your take on that?

I'm going in with an open mind. In my coaching career, I've worked with six international cricket boards. The first thing you do is not make too many changes straight away. You observe, watch, see what you've got, build relationships, identify strengths, and then gradually see if areas can be expanded and made even better. I won't be making wholesale changes overnight. Clearly, a lot is working really well individually and collectively, with performances on the up. The aim is to add to that and keep the positivity going.

So you don't want Gurbaz to change anything just yet…

At the moment, I certainly wouldn't want to change Gurbaz. He's a fine player with a lot of success, and hopefully that continues. As he spoke about during the BPL, it's about playing the situation and the opposition, being sensible. He often chatted to the batting group about those things, so he clearly sees it the same way.

Having watched a number of these players up close, how well do you feel you understand their strengths, and how does that help as you begin work with them?

I've seen bits of them, but not in depth. My plan over the next few days is to go through some footage and really get to know what we've got. I've seen matches and been really impressed and excited by what the team has. It'll be nice to look in more detail from a tactical and technical point of view to see where we're really at.