Tigers to become a force to reckon with Test and T20 in two years!
Photo- CF
|| CF Correspondent ||
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hasan Papon vowed to make the national team a force to reckon with in Test and T20 format as in next two years.
While the national team establish them as a big gun in ODI cricket, winning the matches in and outside of the country quite regularly, they simple couldn’t translate the success in the Test and T20 format, apart from some occasional flashes of brilliance.
“The 2018 was good for us even though we couldn’t finish it off well. Still we won the Test and ODI series against a mighty team like West Indies. We lost the T20 series but still we played good cricket. I am really satisfied the way we performed in the last four or five years. It’s now proved that we can beat any team in and outside of the subcontinent. We have that belief and ability and we have already showed it,” Nazmul said on Wednesday at his Beximco Office in the city.
“But you have to advance step by step. So the next step what we got is really tough as we have to play cricket outside of the country for most of the time in 2019. When you play in the country like New Zealand, South Africa, England, Australia, it’s really tough because we are not used to play in that condition. The earlier we can cope with the condition the better it is for us. Besides we have world cup ahead us. But I believe that the players are motivated enough to do well in alien condition and world cup.”
“Now in ODI, we are stable in and outside of the country but we have some shortcomings in other two formats. The good thing is that we won a Test even outside from the country. But still we are not up to the mark in T20. Personally I think that we have big gap is this particular format. We have to learn the art of T20 cricket as early as possible and I believe we can do it in next two years.”
While Bangladesh got some promising Test players to enrich the pipeline, Nazmul said unfortunately they couldn’t get quite some players to bolster the T20 squad. But he refused to give up and said he believed in the next two years, Bangladesh will be a force in those two formats also.
“We have got some new players like Shadman, Nayeem, pace bowler Khaled in Test cricket. In this longer version format, we tried to add some players in every series, the aim is to get and prepare more players for Test format and prepare a Team for Test format only. We want to do the same thing in T20 cricket also but unfortunately we didn’t get enough players for this format. Our head coach Steve Rhodes will watch the T20 and his aim is to pick up good players for T20 format. But what is good news for us that the current bunch of players played too well that we can’t create a space of new players. However with the system and the players we have, I think we’ll get a stable team which could thrive in Test and T20 cricket like we are doing in ODI cricket.”
