The Bangladesh national cricket team are heading to the 2024 T20 World Cup in the West Indies and USA with a 4-1 series win over Zimbabwe, which head coach Chandika Hathurusingha believes was good enough preparation to do well in the coming event.
Bangladesh won the series comfortably, but there were parts of their game that could make them iffy as the batters failed to assert their dominance in either of the five games, and all of the last three games went down to the wire, with them conceding a defeat in the last one.
While that has left questions and concerns about whether the team is fully prepared, the head coach seemed pretty relaxed about it while talking to the media on Wednesday, as he believed that their preparation has been good enough to do well in the global event, something Bangladesh have not been able to do in the previous editions.
‘Every tournament is an opportunity for us to do better than what we have done before. Yes, T20 cricket has been challenging for us. It shows where we stand in the rankings. So, there’s no denial. But then we are counting on our preparation to do better than what we have done before,’ he told the media on Wednesday.
‘Our preparation, I thought, was very good. We had a good camp in Chattogram and then we played five games against Zimbabwe. So, in those five games, we had the opportunity to give most of the players that we wanted to expose in certain situations, we were able to give them.’
However, Hathurusingha did not hide the fact that the performance of some individuals was not up to the mark, and although he did not name names, the focus went to the likes of Liton Das and Najmul Hossain Shanto, who have not been in touch in the format since the turn of the year.
Bangladesh getting themselves ready by playing against Zimbabwe came under fire when even star all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan said that playing such matches was not preparation enough for such a tournament, something Hathurusingha did not agree to.
‘Playing matches is a good preparation. It’s a matter of any team because the game is such that every game can be tricky. Some teams are stronger than others. But preparation-wise, I thought we had a good preparation playing against Zimbabwe,’ he said.
Questions about Bangladesh’s readiness ahead of the World Cup are in much discussion because of the strong group they are in with Sri Lanka, South Africa, Nepal, and the Netherlands.
A difficult group has seen the Tigers’ head coach settle for advancing from the group stage as the goal.
‘We have high expectations as players and the staff and as well as the fans and the country. The first step is to get through this difficult group stage,’ he said.