Jonathan Trott: 'There's a team to be moulded here and that's what I've enjoyed most'

On a cold August morning in Belfast in 2022, Jonathan Trott, who paid for his own flight to Ireland, and was bundled into a San Francisco 49ers jacket because he had no official kit, began his tenure as Afghanistan's coach. He "didn't know a hell of a lot" about what he was getting into or the people he was getting into it with, but out of his peripheral vision he saw something, and the next day he heard something that told him he was in the right place.

"The nets in Belfast weren't great but we had three, and I remember seeing Ibrahim [Zadran] play a shot out the corner of my eye and I thought, 'Geez, who's that?' And then I turned and I just saw this technique which was unbelievable," Trott says ahead of his last game in charge of the Afghanistan side, against Canada in this year's T20 World Cup. "And then in the same net the next day, I was standing there again and I saw Azmat [Omarzai] hit a ball.

"If you've watched enough cricket, when players hit balls, some hit the balls nicely but there's ones that are special and it makes a different noise. [Ricky] Ponting had it, [Sachin] Tendulkar had it, and it just makes a higher-pitched noise. Azmat hit one and I could see it flying out of the ground.

"And then in the second game, [Rahmanullah] Gurbaz went down and swept the left-arm seamer from Ireland, hit him out the ground, and I was like, 'Who are these guys?'"

At the time Trott knew of Rashid Khan, and he knew [Mohammad] Nabi because he'd coached him at Kent the year after Trott had finished playing.

The Afghanistan job came to him almost by accident. His mentor, Graham Thorpe, initially took the role and Trott was hopeful of being part of the support staff. "I interviewed for the batting [coach] role, but it didn't fit with the amount of time away and offer and that kind of thing, so I was going to turn it down. Then, unfortunately, Graham had a few things going on in his life and couldn't take up the opportunity, so I was offered [the head coach job]. And I gladly accepted," Trott says.

The first few assignments came thick and fast. Ten days after the Ireland series, which Afghanistan lost 3-2, they were in the UAE for the Asia Cup. "We beat Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and went through to the next round and we should have beaten Pakistan but they won somehow and then we lost to India. That was my first experience, and it was a huge roller coaster early on."

"[Azmatullah Omarzai] is a fantastic player and one of my favourite cricketers at the moment and will be until he retires. I saw a boy develop into a man. Before, he didn't really speak much and he's now speaking fluent English. He's even learned the art of sarcasm, which is amazing for me"

After the initial rush, Trott had a little bit of time to get to know his players better and to understand the magnitude of the task that lay ahead.

"There was so much talent but there was no structure. There was no plan. It was just thrown together, and sometimes they'd play well and the rest of the time, when the pressure's on, there was no plan B," he says. "In the beginning, I put in place the structure. Things like: let's be on the bus on time, let's make sure we get to practice on time.

"There's so many things, as a western coach, that I had to learn. For example, I would say that practice starts at 6pm and then we're going to do fielding until 6.30pm and I was told, 'No coach, we've got prayer time at 6.20.' There's so many things that you don't think about as a Westerner when you're coaching outside of your environment."

Afghanistan were not just a team from a different culture to the one Trott knew from his suburban Cape Town upbringing and later his Birmingham lifestyle; they were at the opposite end of the spectrum. They came from a place devastated by conflict; many of their players grew up in refugee camps, without access to basic education, and Trott was unprepared for what that would mean for him.

"There's a language barrier, there's an education barrier. I remember my first team meeting, as a Level 4 coach. I had printed out the team rules and team values. I sent it to the manager and the manager told me that many of the players couldn't read," he says. "I asked if we could translate it to Pashto, and he said some couldn't read that either, so it's probably best to leave it in English and try and get a translator."

Omarzai was one of the players whose talent piqued the coach's interest early, and who has continued to earn his praise. "He is a fantastic player and one of my favourite cricketers at the moment and will be until he retires," Trott says. "I saw a boy develop into a man.

"Before, he didn't really speak much and he's now speaking fluent English. He's even learned the art of sarcasm, which is amazing for me."

There have been other indicators of how Omarzai has made it. Not only was he recognised as the ICC's 2024 ODI cricketer of the year, he plays in all the big T20 leagues. "I've seen cricketers like him evolve, play in the IPL and earn good money and that's a huge thing," Trott says. "Now these guys are earning enough money in the franchise world to change the trajectory of not only their own lives but also their families and generations into the future."

He keeps coming back to the human element because it is unavoidably raw in the Afghanistan environment and far removed from anything he had experienced before. "We went to the [2022 T20 World Cup] after that Asia Cup and two of Mujeeb [ur-Rahman]'s cousins were killed in Afghanistan," he says. "It's heartbreaking.

"All of the players have suffered loss in some way, shape or form. I'm talking, like, parents dying, brothers and sisters dying, those sorts of things that don't happen in the Western world. You don't take that into account. So when you're coaching someone here, there's a different perspective on life."

Against that backdrop, Trott tried to establish and maintain the same kind of standard he would have wanted had none of the hardships existed. Part of it was instilling some of his own batting virtues in players who, he admits, have more natural flair, extravagance and innovation than he did.

"There's so much raw talent and power, and you can see," he says. "A lot of these guys, they'll just hit a six, boom! But it's in between the sixes that they need to get a little bit better at understanding. Hit a six, then a single. What gets lost is the art of rotation, soaking up pressure, knowing when to put your foot down and when to take it off. That comes with years of playing and understanding momentum."

Where experience is lacking, he dials it back to the very building blocks of the game. "I say to these guys, just do the basics really well. When you're fielding, pick it up, throw it over the top. Sometimes it sounds simple, but my philosophy is do the basics as well as you can. Doing the basics looks after you when you're under pressure, but also allows you to do the exceptional more often. When you look at the best players around the world - [Virat] Kohli or [AB] de Villiers - they do the basics really well. They've got a good defence. They know what they're doing. They're not just sluggers of the ball. They play good cricket shots. They run hard between the wickets. Their fielding is excellent."

The basics also include off-field aspects like sleep and diet. "I learnt in the Asia Cup the guys were getting up too late and we were getting to games and they were still lethargic and we were losing in Asia Cup," Trott says. "Now, we've been getting up early, getting the nutrition, hydration, those sorts of things early. Because otherwise if the bus left at 8.30, guys would be getting up at 8.15am and not eating. And then they'd maybe have a Red Bull and a packet of chips on the bus.

"Learning these sorts of things, they'll hopefully pass it on to the next generation."

With Afghanistan, Trott has been able do more of the thing that gives him the most satisfaction, the actual nitty-gritty of coaching, rather than being a player manager, which is largely the modern way. "I've always enjoyed coaching," he says. "That's the one thing that I'm yet to feel coaching in the western world. There'll be times where I've left net sessions [with Afghanistan] having really enjoyed the coaching side. The guys want to learn so much. Whereas when you coach the western guys, I'm not sure they're as receptive. Sometimes as a head coach, you feel like a bit of a facilitator and a guy who's there just to write on the whiteboard, and guys have a batting order, and then you just let them go.

"Whereas with these guys there's a team to be moulded here, and that's the one thing I've enjoyed the most, being able to mould them and give instructions and learn from mistakes and those sorts of things."

The results have spoken for themselves. Under Trott, Afghanistan narrowly missed out on the 2023 ODI ODI World Cup semi-final, and made it to the knockouts of the 2024 T20 edition. They will not repeat that in 2026, but his overall record is strong.

For four years @Trotty you stood shoulder to shoulder with us through every high and low. You believed in this Afghanistan team from day one - and it changed us.
Thank you for walking this journey with us. Respect and gratitude. pic.twitter.com/px52muZ3Ld

— Mohammad Nabi (@MohammadNabi007) February 20, 2026

He's got a good thing going and it's clear he loves the job, so why is it all coming to an end?

"It's to do with the job descriptions changing," he says. "They want [the coach to spend] more time in Afghanistan and not too much stuff in the UAE. But I also think maybe it's the right time, close to four years. I'm sure the players are sick of my voice. They want a different voice."

There's a bit more to it than that. "I think my standards that I have with the board are… I'm honest with them, and I always say this to them: the level that these guys operate at, compared to the support that they get in Afghanistan, the facilities, the availability of stuff that they're afforded to develop and enhance their cricket, is so far below what it should be. That's the most miraculous thing, is how these guys are able to operate, conduct themselves."

Trott makes special mention of Rashid, who he calls a "model professional", and who has been his right-hand man over his term. "He's a huge support," he says. "With Rash it's always been a mutual respect. Maybe not that I've deserved [but] because of the player that he is - he gives that to all coaches. The respect for the game is huge, and he leads from the front and makes my job very easy."