|| CF Correspondent ||

Defending champions Rangpur Riders all-rounder Benny Howell believe that they need to step up in the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League to beat the host at their own den as they get ready to start their campaign at Sylhet.

BPL resumed at Sylhet after completing the opening phase at Dhaka from January 15 while the champions will complete their Sylhet-phase campaign by playing  against Sylhet Sixers respectively on January 16 and 19.

It seemed Riders are quite aware that if they want to get back into business strongly they need to win both their games against Sixers more after their two successive close defeats in their last two matches that ended their Dhaka phase campaign with two wins from five matches.

“Both games here are against Sylhet. We’d like to win both. It will put us in a good position.

“They have some big names – Pooran, Warner and a couple of good bowlers as well. We will do research on them, and try to use our strength as much as we can.

Howell said that they are yet to push the panic button despite their present standing in the points table as it is still very early to predict who will reach the last four after completing the group-phase of the tournament.

Rangpur lost a close game against Dhaka Dynamites that went right down the wire as they failed to score 14 runs in the last over while they repeated a similar action against Rajshahi Kings when they failed to accumulate nine runs in the last over to earn their third loss in five games.

 “It is all good. It is early days. We still have another 6-7 games left. It is not ideal to lose close games but it also puts us in good stead for situations like those again,’’ said Howell.

Howell said that Riders bowlers need to understand that they have to be cleverer in the shortest format of the game as it is the bowlers who play a big part in these franchise-based Twenty20 tournaments.