“Passion for this great game, commitment, unity, hard work, courage and the pride of playing for our country, drives us.

“Now we are representing our country on the international stage, the players are very committed and eager to achieve a clear goal to help their team progress to the elite level, to play and beat big names at the highest level.

“We have struggled a lot to achieve our current status, now we will try to maintain it and try to achieve Test status.”

Loyal supporters of the Bermuda cause would absolutely love for the above quotes to have come from Clay Smith.

It would show that not only is our national sport in good hands, but also that our players had finally, finally bought in to the truism that representing your country is the greatest of privileges, not a right to be freely dispensed like condoms at a safe-sex convention.

However, those comments did not come from our national coach, but from Inzamam-ul-Haq, the former Pakistan captain and now coach of Afghanistan.

The same Afghanistan whose name at the beginning of the previous decade was more synonymous with the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that changed the face of the world than it was with cricket.

The same Afghanistan who less than ten years ago, when Bermuda was appearing in a first Cricket World Cup, had yet to play its first competitive match under the auspices of the International Cricket Council.

The same Afghanistan who were the only nation to beat West Indies at the just concluded World Twenty20 in India, while Bermuda's greatest victory over that spectacular 3½-week period for global cricket has been in simply getting cricketers to train.

Afghanistan and Bermuda. Rise and fall. One country on the elevator up; the other on the elevator down.

It stands to reason that somewhere along the way they would get off for coffee before continuing their respective dates with destiny — and it came on April 2, 2009 in Potchefstroom, South Africa, during the World Cup Qualifiers after the Middle East nation had captured the third of their consecutive titles, having started their journey in World Cricket League Division Five.

An evenly matched contest turned with the dismissal of Glenn Blakeney to end a 118-run partnership for the third wicket with Stephen Outerbridge, and Afghanistan sauntered to a 60-run win defending 239.

That is as close as the countries have been, for, despite Afghanistan failing ultimately to reach the 2011 World Cup, they avoided the fate of relegation to Division Three that befell Bermuda and continued to trend upward.

Meanwhile, Bermuda have plumbed depth after depth — on the field and off it — and, when they next line up at international level in Division Four this autumn, they will be faced with the United States, Denmark, Italy and two from Jersey, Oman, Nigeria, Tanzania, Guernsey and Vanuatu after the Division Five tournament reaches its conclusion next month,

Gone are Blakeney and Outerbridge; gone, too, is virtually everyone else from that 2009 squad, while the Bermuda future of David Hemp, who will be 46 by the end of the Division Four tournament, has to be highly questionable.

Not because he is no longer capable at this level, but because it is very likely he has given all he could give to an ungrateful nation that is yet fully to appreciate that being Bermudian-born and bred is not the only qualifier for giving good service to the country.

So we are left with the New Age cricketer, many of those who did the nasty at Wellington Oval last summer; not the video nasty, the culprits of which have mysteriously still to be uncovered, but what took place on the pitch in a Cup Match that did not get to tea on the second day

Coach Smith, being the forgiving soul he is, adopted an open-door policy when he beat out incumbent Arnold Manders for the job. If Smith thought his popularity with the younger set would give him a jump-start, he would quickly be proved wrong, as indifference to training under Manders became indifference to training under Smith.

It is now clear Manders did not become the wrong coach overnight; he was simply having to coach the wrong players.

With an initial squad that seemed to include allcomers, Smith and his backroom staff have come to the realisation that you cannot be chasing those who do not want to put in the hard yards, for they will be the first to bail when the going gets tough.

So it is, then, on those who desperately want it — like every member of the Afghanistan squad — and the youth that the focus should be placed. The cleverer, the better.

This is nothing akin to Mark Nicholas suggesting that West Indies lacked brains, but there has been a shortage of nous in Bermuda cricket for some time.

It is pointless for the coaching staff to dream up the most cunning plan, for its execution to be stumbled over through a lack of cricketing intellect.

An insight into Smith's thoughts in that department will be given when he selects his first captain.

It is to be hoped that lucky soul will not be constantly looking over his shoulder for instruction while the game passes him and Bermuda by.

Meanwhile, today Afghanistan are aiming to make the most of a dominant opening in their Intercontinental Cup match against Namibia, starting the second day 49 runs behind with nine first-innings wickets in hand.

Yes, this is a four-day match, Afghanistan are fifth of eight nations and would go third with a big win, which appears on the cards.

The winner of this competition gets a pathway to status — to Test cricket, mind, lest anyone harbours thoughts of work stoppages or hunger strikes — by playing off in the Test Challenge against the tenth-ranked nation in 2018.

Test status is an honour that would be bestowed for four years until the next challenge, capping a remarkable journey that began only 15 years ago when Afghanistan was made an affiliate member of the ICC, while its players were on a discovery tour to Pakistan and America had begun bombing its homeland in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Passion for this great game, commitment, unity, hard work, courage and the pride of playing for your country.

Put that in a bottle, Clay Smith, sprinkle it freely over your charges and you may, just may, be on to a winner.