Rhodes backs his charges
Steve Rhodes
||CF Correspondent||
Bangladesh head coach Steve Rhodes insisted that he is not losing faith in his charges despite being humiliated by Zimbabwe in the opening Test at Sylhet.
Bangladesh paid the price of their yet another rusty batting performance to taste a crushing 151-run defeat to Zimbabwe in the first Test. In doing so, they also kept the trend of not winning the match in their country’s any venue’s maiden Test match.
Zimbabwe in contrast registered its first victory since their heroics against Pakistan at Harare in 2013 to go up 1-0 in the two-match series. The Southern African nation lost 11 matches and drew one Test before this victory in Bangladesh. Their previous away Test win came in 2001, that too, against Bangladesh.
“Everybody has a bad day… You guys will often go to work and have a bad day at work and we had a really bad day at work in that first innings while batting,” said Rhodes
“We will try and put things right with the players we’ve got,” he added
The name of seasoned first-class campaigner Tushar Imran cropped up on quite a few occasions, who failed to get the attention of the selectors after being dumped by the national team in 2007.
However, Rhodes is confident that the current setup possesses the ability to make a comeback and there is no reason he should not back them.
“In the NCL [first-class tournament] the guys that are playing now [in the national team] are scoring a lot of runs and they are actually scoring more runs than some of the guys that are being mentioned,” said Rhodes when he was being asked about Tushar.
“Shanto made a 180, Das made 200, Mominul made 100 not out in his last game. Ariful with a double century… so there is plenty of runs being scored there. And this are good guys, they are good players and at the moment I feel we’ve got our best players bar Tamim and Shakib and so at the moment we are backing these guys.
“I will like a better result in the Test match but we will be working hard with the crop we have got,” he added.
