Bangladesh made a great comeback in the ODIs against West Indies after suffering a whitewash in the Test series. However, one thing that hasn’t changed throughout the whole time is the team’s reliability on its senior set of players.

For instance, in the second ODI, when Bangladesh needed eight runs off the last over, Mushfiqur Rahim got out in the very first ball after taking the team very close to the victory. The onus was then on Mosaddek Hossain to carry the team past the finishing line. But the young all-rounder miserably failed and could only manage to score three runs from four deliveries.

Bangladesh clearly rely more on the likes of Tamim Iqbal, Mahmudullah Riyad, Mushfiqur, Shakib Al Hasan, and Mashrafe Mortaza than on players like Anamul Haque, Sabbir Rahman, Mosaddek Hossain, and Mehidy Hasan.

BCB game development committee’s manager and coach Nazmul Abedin Fahim addressed this issue recently and said that the team needs a leader at crucial times and the juniors in the team haven’t been able to become one. He also said that those players undoubtedly have the potential to deliver whatever is required but the way they have been looked upon, at the national team, hasn’t allowed them to do so.

He said: “I think that [only senior are playing well] because we know the potential of the likes of [Anamul Haque] Bijoy, Sabbir [Rahman], Mosaddek [Hossain]. They have shown it at different times.

“The worrying thing is that they are not yet at the place where they should have been by now. And I always say this: the way we have been looking at them since the beginning, it is wrong.

“We are not giving them the chance to be leaders, we are not looking at them like they are adults. We want them to grow in the shadow of Shakib and Tamim, which is totally wrong.

“The ideal thing would be if Mosaddek was already batting better than Shakib, same for Sabbir Rahman, so that we go to a new height in 10 years. But this hasn’t happened.

“They [the younger players] are very intelligent, much more than the senior players. But their upbringing [within the national team] hasn’t been correct. Also, I don’t get any energetic vibes from them, something that we saw in Shakib, Tamim and [Mahmudullah] Riyad.

“They [the seniors] worked exceedingly hard to bring the national side to where it is now. But the youngsters don’t share the same spirit. The blame for this falls on us as well since we didn’t want to see leadership qualities in them and, subsequently, didn’t groom them accordingly.